Extinction risk of soil biota

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151123/ncomms9862/full/ncomms9862.html

I am posting this because scientists are trying to assess the future of soil microbiology.

The article goes into depth about micro organism interactions and felt anyone who is interested in living soil would be interested.

It is way to large to post in its entirety

Summary

No species lives on earth forever. Knowing when and why species go extinct is crucial for a complete understanding of the consequences of anthropogenic activity, and its impact on ecosystem functioning. Even though soil biota play a key role in maintaining the functioning of ecosystems, the vast majority of existing studies focus on aboveground organisms. Many questions about the fate of belowground organisms remain open, so the combined effort of theorists and applied ecologists is needed in the ongoing development of soil extinction ecology.

Weird cool find.
I started to read the article, I will finish later, but on first read the different between macro species vs micro species or organisms in the soil is wastly different.

Microorganisms can be carried to new place by wind, animals, people and thousand different ways.

Microbes are very very tough. For a chunk of them surived from the beginning of the earth. I don't think their going anywhere....

If something catastrophic comes along we might get a rapid decrease in numbers and probably diversity. The microbes are tough and have the ability to reproduce rapidly and to mutate to meet the needs of a new environment.

I found it enlightening where it discusses failure in soil due to organism loss by showing what benefits they provide.

So helpful to understand the roles in their interactive co development

Did not read hehe, but I know microorganisms were the first life on this planet. It figures they will be the last to leave, if my simple reasoning works.

I will read it now feeling a little guilty to post without doing that.

thought this was pretty interesting read Weird.

goes to show you just how little we understand our world around us.

" It is hard to encapsulate the extent to which each of these drivers can lead to the loss of belowground diversity but the scientific community needs to work on this. " word.


The author touches on something that has been in the back of my mind for a while now... the introduction of invasive micro-species.

non-native, invasive micro-biota artificially introduced into a landscape has the potential to drive out and even extinct the native local micro-biota. So, that fancy bottle of pure organic micro-herdz has the capability of micro food-web annihilation.

As well as artificially introduced predatory arthropods.