NPSGrand Prismatic Spring, in Yellowstone National Park: water rich in as-yet-unidentified microorganismsNPS
For each species of known living things on the planet, there are 100,000 yet to be identified, according to a projection made by a group at Indiana University in the United States. The group’s paper reports that Earth is likely home to one trillion species of microorganisms, of which 99.999% are unknown. The survey was based on information in government and academic databases on 5.6 million microorganisms, plants and animals from 35 locations on land and in the oceans. The estimate of the total number of species was obtained through the use of ecological models of how biodiversity is related to the abundance of living creatures (PNAS, May 2, 2016). According to the research, which was funded by the Dimensions of Biodiversity program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), bacteria are the most abundant microorganisms and are capable of living in extreme environments. Soil appeared to be the environment most conducive to the development of living beings (one gram of earth can contain over a billion organisms). Identifying microbial diversity, therefore, remains a challenge. Of all the species of microorganisms catalogued, only about 10,000 can be grown in a laboratory, and the genome of fewer than 100,000 has been sequenced to date.
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