ecosystem importance: Earth's microbiome importance (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 05, 2022, 20:02 (778 days ago) @ David Turell

A new important study:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-022-01228-3.epdf?sharing_token=UPAAePzKGa5mEOZh9...

"Microbial life represents the majority of Earth’s biodiversity. Across disparate disciplines from medicine to forestry, scientists continue to discover how the microbiome drives essential, macro-scale processes in plants, animals and entire ecosystems. Yet, there is an emerging realization that Earth’s microbial biodiversity is under threat. Here we advocate for the conservation and restoration of soil microbial life, as well as active incorporation of microbial biodiversity into managed food and forest landscapes, with an emphasis on soil fungi. We analyse 80 experiments to show that native soil microbiome restoration can accelerate plant biomass production by 64% on average, across ecosystems... Harnessing the planet’s breadth of microbial life has the potential to transform ecosystem management, but it requires that we understand how to monitor and conserve the Earth’s microbiome."

"Global estimates of the Earth’s biodiversity include 5 million to 7.7 million unique species of animals1,2, 500,000 plants3, 6 million to 8 million terrestrial fungi4,5 and up to 1 trillion species of prokaryotes6. The Earth microbiome—the full complement of pro- and eukaryotic microbial life—represents the majority of Earth’s biodiversity. Microbial life was the first to inhabit our planet7 and will probably be the last. Microbes regulate the major biogeochemical cycles on Earth, to the extent that signatures of microbial biogeochemical activity underpin efforts to discover extraterrestrial life8. By regulating global nutrient cycles, greenhouse gas exchange, and disease transmission and protection, the Earth microbiome provides an essential life-support system to our planet. A functioning Earth without a functioning microbiome is nearly unimaginable. Yet, like all other domains of life, there is increasing evidence that the Earth microbiome is under threat. Early indicators come from soil fungi, which live a dual life as both micro- and macrobiological organisms9. A century of monitoring shows a remarkable 45% decline in mushroom-forming mycorrhizal fungi across Europe, probably due to land conversion and intense nitrogen pollution10,11. Anecdotal reports of fungal species extinctions around the world are increasingly pervasive12 but require additional and repeated monitoring efforts." (my bold)

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"Biodiversity–ecosystem stability relationships are some of the most reproducible patterns in ecology95–99. As a result, there is mounting effort to increase the aboveground macrobiological diversity of our managed landscapes. Despite these lessons from aboveground ecosystems, there is increasing danger of repeating the mistakes of macrobiological agriculture at the micro scale, with consequences for indigenous microbial taxa100. For example, given the potential of microbial inoculations to promote plant productivity, there is an exploding landscape of microbial inoculant companies advocating for the large-scale application of single species or very low-diversity non-native microbial consortia. Most recently, a startup has announced ambitions to inoculate over 1 million hectares of agricultural land primarily with a single species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus101. While some microorganisms are present across many ecosystems, mass application of single species may result in a loss of genetic and ecological diversity, and is unlikely to account for ecosystem-specific requirements, for example, in types and rates of soil processes... The ‘Effective Microorganisms’ initiative began over 40 years ago in Japan, and has built native and biodiverse consortia of bacteria and yeasts, which have been shown to enhance crop productivity in most cases103,104. Essentially, a particular combination of functional groups of microorganisms is sourced from the local environment, grown in co-culture, and then applied as a solution directly to plants or soil103. This work has been replicated in multiple environments, using locally sourced microbial communities to enhance agricultural outcomes105,106. Ultimately, we should move towards approaches that can use locally sourced, native and biodiverse communities of soil organisms to achieve outcomes. These approaches are possible and may have greater potential than reductionist ones107... Manipulative experiments and meta-analysis have demonstrated that microbiome diversity and network complexity can enhance multiple ecosystem functions, generating fundamentally more stable and productive ecosystems114–118. These findings suggest that embracing native microbial biodiversity and complexity within managed ecosystems may allow for greater production, while also allowing these systems to remain reservoirs of significant microbial diversity. But how can this be achieved? Here we offer three actions that, if taken, we believe could fundamentally change how the world values and applies microbial biodiversity, in particular for managed ecosystems."

Comment: the article is filled with examples of how to improve this basic diversity at the bottom of our Earth's primary ecosystem. It came from God's dead ends, despite dhw's objections to dead ends as useless. He needs a big re-think.