Microbial Communities vs. Deforestation

By: Laura Murillo

Figure 1. Abundances of major microbial populations in forest and pasture soils. Figure taken from Khan et al. 2019.

The Amazon forest has been a focal point in news lately, mainly because of the wildfires that 

have broken out, but this is not the only event affecting the vast ecosystem that is housed by

the Amazon. Due to rising human needs, such as fuel and food, deforestation has been 

inevitable.  And just like the bigger species, microorganisms are also affected. In order to see 

to what extent they are affected, Khan, Bohannan, and colleagues gathered a total of 10 soil

samples from a primary forest and an established pasture. Various instruments for extracting 

and sequencing DNA were then used to categorize and estimate the populations of the different microorganisms in both the forest and pasture. After their gathering data and analyzing the 

statistics, it was determined that the distribution of major microbial phyla between forest and pasture components was not preserved. We determined that microbial communities comprising the networks 

were significantly different between forest and pasture. These differences were true at the phylum 

(Khan et al., 2019). By looking at figure 3, acidobacteria and alphaproteobacteria were the ones with the greatest difference. This research really shows how much we really are taking a 

toll on our planet, and how even the smallest microorganisms are being affected. 

Original Article:

M A Wadud Khan, Brendan J M Bohannan, Klaus Nüsslein, James M Tiedje, Susannah G Tringe, Eloi Parlade, Albert Barberán, 

Jorge L M Rodrigues, Deforestation impacts network co-occurrence patterns of microbial communities in Amazon soils, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 95, Issue 2, February 2019.