Climate Change Could Impact Vital Functions Of Microbes

Global climate change will not only impact plants and animals but will also affect bacteria, fungi and other microbial populations that perform a myriad of functions important to life on earth. It is not entirely certain what those effects will be, but they could be significant and will probably not be good, say researchers June 3 at a scientific meeting in Boston.
“Microbes perform a number of critical functions for ecosystems around the world and we are only starting to understand the impact that global change is having on them,” says Kathleen Treseder of the University of California, Irvine, at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

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While rising temperatures may be reducing microbial carbon dioxide production, rising levels of carbon dioxide due to human activity can cause subtle but important shifts in the composition of microbial populations, says John Kelly of Loyola University in Chicago. Kelly is studying the effect of increased carbon dioxide on microbial populations both on the leaves of trees in Northern Michigan and in leaves decomposing in streams and has found a distinct shift in some microbial populations. This could have an enormous impact on the food chain as the microbes are as much, if not more, a source of nutrients for the small animals that feed on these leaves.

Science Daily