When it Comes to Climate Change, Don’t Forget the Microbes

Britt Koskella, an evolutionary biologist and assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, collaborated with over 30 biologists on a statement published in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology to bring attention to the relationship between microbes and climate change. Scientists are usually focused on major impacts that climate change will have on humans, plants, and animals. But the Earth’s microbes are usually forgotten. Ironically everything else depends on these microbes.

A brown layer of ice algae coats the sea ice in Antarctica. These microbes thrive in sea ice ‘houses’ and are the very beginning of many food webs, which further branch out to feed all larger lifeforms. Melting sea ice affects the ice algae, which means a diminished food web and greater risk of a starving ocean life.

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