You are here: www.bacteriamuseum > Special feature files > Microbial Ecology<
>Related: go to: Extremophiles go to: Applied Microbiolgoy
Special feature:Microbial Ecology
Microbial ecology is the study of ecosystems that are composed
of or influenced by microscopic organisms. Microbial
ecology includes many different topics (Source: International
Society for Microbial Ecology)
Ofcourse an ecosystem does not consist of bacteria exclusively. Even arid
land soil crusts harbor an ecosystem in which many bacterial species
live together with eukaryotic algae, fungi, lichens, and bryophytes. (Source:
soilcrust.org).
Human activity frequently damages natural ecosystems, but we try
hard to repair some of that damage, and bacteria can help with these repairs.
Check our display on applied
microbiology for what diverse jobs bacteria are used as a cheap labor.
-
Freshwater pollution by organic material is made worse by bacterial activity.
The solution would be to stop pollution; the cure can be the application
of the right type of bacteria. Read about
fresh water pollution (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
UK)
The term microbial ecology is broad enough to cover different fields of
microbiological research. For instance, the ecology of the microbial content of the animal gut can be studied in response to feed and feed additives (Source: Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences). Or are you more interested in marine microbial ecology? (this is a PDF file) (Source: Uni Miami).
The reason why molecular biology techniques are so popular among microbial
ecologists is because their organisms are so difficult to grow. Here is
a clear description of the benefits of molecular
microbial ecology (Source: MicroTextBook). Such
techniques can be applied to microorganisms in soil, which are of key importance
to agriculture: they can be benificial to plant crops, or malign. Read
about microbiology
of agricultural soils (Source: University colleage Cork).
-
By the way, how many bacteria do you think inhabit our planet? Check
it out (Source: WhyFiles)
For further reference on microbial ecology:
Societies and research initiatives:
The International society
for Microbial Ecology
American
Society of Microbiology division N: Microbial Ecology
The Centre of Microbial Ecology (Michigan State Uni)
Gutbugs: intestinal bacteriology (by K. Hillman)
Further reading:
List
of book reviews on the subject (Source: Society of General
Microbiology)
The content of this page is copyright of the Virtual Museum of Bacteria and was written by Dr. T. M. Wassenaar (curator), with support of the Foundation for Bacteriology (Dr. M.J. Blaser, President).
Special Feature files cover various aspects of bacteria, bacteriology,
and bacterial diseases and are produced with support from
Choose another exhibit in this catagory or go to another catagory from
the menue at the top of this page
Page last modified: 08 Mar 2005
This page will no longer be updated. We apologize for inactive links.