QUT
Climate-saving fungi: Where microbial ecology meets sustainability. Speaker: Professor James Tiedje, from the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. Microbes could be the way to a sustainable future, by offsetting atmospheric carbon dioxide, helping to produce biofuels and reducing our need for fertilisers. When: August 12, 2008 at 10.00am-12.00pm. Where: Gardens Point campus, George St, Brisbane. Room: OJW Room, S Block. Cost: free. Info: Harminder Bhar, phone 07 3138 7009, email
bhar@qut.edu.au, web
QUT | ISR: Institute for Sustainable Resources.
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"Before now, all biologists could do was look at the biodiversity of microbes that could be cultured in a petri dish. We now know that the vast majority of microbial life cannot be kept in captivity. Now we have the ability to grab DNA from the environment and try to characterize different species or taxonomic groups using genetic material, allowing our field to blast off."
Yet, she added: "We are just beginning to scratch the surface of what these patterns look like.
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researchers found twice as many microbes at the equator than at the poles
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As they went higher, plant life saw a decline in species richness, but for microbes, researchers saw a hump shape in species richness as they went up the slopes.
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Yet microbes are the most diverse set of organisms on Earth, and they are really important for how ecosystems work. Our study establishes the first elevation-gradient pattern for microbes. We found that, yes, microbes do have a diversity pattern that is similar to what has been studied for plants and animals, but the pattern is different than what you see for plants in the Rockies, and there is much to be done to understand why microbes might have a different biodiversity pattern."
It could boil down to finding a good comparative technique, she said. "I don't think that microbes are fundamentally different from a biological standpoint from plants and animals. I think that we haven't figured out how to study them in an analogous way."
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Microbes, By Latitudes And Altitudes, Shed New Light On Life's Diversity
