The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, has established a new expert group that will help shape conservation priorities for a previously overlooked but vital group of organisms: microbes.
In a recent commentary, the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG), formed in July, announced that it will look at the status and threats to various beneficial microbes, including bacteria, fungi and viruses, that are critical for the health of humans and ecosystems.
The IUCN’s various expert groups have to date focused largely on visible animals and plants. They include the Shark Specialist Group, Pangolin Specialist Group and Orchid Specialist Group. Some fungal expert groups have been created to focus on specific fungal habitats, countries or types of fungus. However, microorganisms are generally missing from global conservation efforts, the researchers write, despite their importance to the stability of ecosystems, human health and food security.
“It’s been easy to overlook microbes because they are invisible,” Jack A. Gilbert, commentary co-author and MCSG co-lead from the University of California, San Diego, U.S., said in a statement. “Having IUCN elevate microbes in this way will ensure that critical microbes are assessed and protected from extinction.”
The MCSG, the researchers write, will work toward several goals in the coming years, including building a global network to advise on conservation priorities while “compiling and visualizing global data on microbial ecosystems that are currently threatened by habitat destruction and anthropogenic activity.” The group will also develop a microorganism-specific Red List criteria to classify microbes at high risk of extinction.
Gilbert told Mongabay by email that the MCSG is still exploring what such a list would look like, but he cited some examples of critical microbes threatened by human activities. Marine cyanobacteria (Prochlorococcus spp.), for instance, are major producers of the oxygen we breathe and they fuel open-ocean food webs, he said. However, this critical microbe group is threatened by warming seas, ocean acidification and nutrient shifts.
Actinomycetes, a group of bacteria widespread in soil and aquatic environments, are a source of several antibiotics and anticancer and immunosuppressant drugs, as well as industrial enzymes, Gilbert said. They’re also vital for healthy soils. Yet, “intensive agriculture, land degradation, pollution, and climate stress erodes actinomycete richness and function,” he said.
Similarly, algae from the Symbiodiniaceae family produce energy that shallow corals need to survive, but the algae are threatened by heat stress that drives coral bleaching and mass reef die-offs, Gilbert said.
Beneficial microbes are also vulnerable to being replaced by opportunistic pathogens in degraded ecosystems, Raquel Peixoto, commentary co-author and MCSG co-lead from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, told Mongabay.
Gilbert said the MCSG hopes to apply their understanding of microbes to facilitate the conservation of other organisms, from trees and grasses to otters and pandas.
Banner image: Prochlorococcus marinus, a globally significant marine cyanobacterium. Image by Luke Thompson from Chisholm Lab and Nikki Watson from Whitehead, MIT, 2007, via Flickr (Public domain).
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