Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] First Global Atlas of Soil Bacteria | Technology Networks

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Georg Parlow <g.parlow@gmx.at>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] First Global Atlas of Soil Bacteria | Technology Networks
  • Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2018 22:02:15 +0100

> The researchers found that just two percent of all bacterial taxa—or around
> 500 individual species—consistently accounted for almost half of the soil
> bacterial communities worldwide.
>
>
> Having been identified as both dominant and ubiquitous, these predictably
> common bacteria can now be targeted for future study.

Hm, this kind of science is a double edged sword, IMHO. While it might be
good to gather all this data, and eventually maybe aid in the rehabilitation
of destroyed soils and possibly other things as well, I am also sniffing
dangers in there. One certaily being somehow similar to the vitamin and
nutrient thing a few decades ago. Just because the other 98% of taxa are
statistically represented in just very tiny amounts, some of them -or even
most of them, who knows?- might be just as important for those microbioma to
stay groovy. Also in some local soils some members of these 98% might
comprise the bulk of specimen present.

Statistics is a bitch. Unfortunately way too many scientists used to
oversimplify or transfer mechanistic models onto natural processes, luring
them to jumping to conclusions. But let’s hope these days are over…

Georg



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page