This week I was honoured with the pleasure to take part on an amazing pioneering gathering of global experts to launch a worldwide microbial conservation initiative. The meeting, held at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the University of California San Diego, gathered researchers from all over the world working on the most diverse threatened microbial environments as well as conservation practitioners, including representatives from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and their Species Survival Commission.

The group aims at raising awareness of the importance of conserving microbes and microbial communities, as well as developing sound strategies to achieve these goals.

As part of the meeting I had the opportunity to learn more about a diverse array of interesting microbial environments, such as the microbial mats of Cuatro Ciénagas in Mexico, an incredibly diverse microbial environment that is under threat due to different human pressures. Other interesting environments from corals, to plants and their rhizosphere, to the cryosphere (frozen environments in the Arctic and Antarctic) also took the stage, highlighting the diversity of habitats and communities that are in urgent need of conservation.

A Science correspondent joined the meeting and wrote an interesting piece about the group’s aims and objectives.

Many synergies emerged from discussions during the meeting including potential avenues to apply the theoretical ecological models we develop at the Computational Ecology Lab to the successful conservation of complex communities: microbial and macrobial!

A huge shout out to Jack and Kent for letting me part of this amazing initiative. Thanks guys!