ReviewNature microbiology2022
Defending Earth's terrestrial microbiome.
Review in Nature microbiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Soil microbial effects on tree seedling performance during forest secondary succession.Ecology · 2026Article
- Soil microbial conservation cannot rely on above-ground biodiversity.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Article
- Global distribution and biogeography of ericoid mycorrhizal fungi.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Altering our (soils') future.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- Agricultural intensification, microbial homogenization and loss of rare microbiota.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Plant recognition by Trichoderma Harzianum elicits upregulation of a novel secondary metabolite cluster required for colonization.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- MicrobialScope: an integrated genomic resource with rich annotations across bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Developing global goals for soil health research and action: report on the "Soil Stars Heligan Summit," The Lost Gardens of Heligan, UK, March 2026.Sustainable microbiology · 2026Article
- Indigenous microbiology: Why Indigenous knowledge matters in microbial science.FEMS microbes · 2026Article
- Article
- Soil microbial community differences drive variation in Pinus sylvestris physiology, productivity, and responses to elevated COEnvironmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Safeguarding microbial biodiversity: microbial conservation specialist group within the species survival commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2025Article
- Integrating belowground recovery into tropical forest restoration design and monitoring.Bioscience · 2025Article
- Footprints of Human Migration in the Population Structure of Wild Baker's Yeast.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Article
- Empirical evidence supports neither land sparing nor land sharing as the main strategy to manage agriculture-biodiversity tradeoffs.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Tier-based standards for FAIR sequence data and metadata sharing in microbiome research.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Microbiome matters: how transplantation methods and donor origins shape the successful restoration of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Microbes Under Climate Refugia: Equable Subcommunity Rank Dynamics in Large-River Deltaic Estuaries.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microbial life represents the majority of Earth's biodiversity. Across disparate disciplines from medicine to forestry, scientists continue to discover how the microbiome drives essential, macro-scale processes in plants, animals and entire ecosystems. Yet, there is an emerging realization that Earth's microbial biodiversity is under threat. Here we advocate for the conservation and restoration of soil microbial life, as well as active incorporation of microbial biodiversity into managed food and forest landscapes, with an emphasis on soil fungi. We analyse 80 experiments to show that native soil microbiome restoration can accelerate plant biomass production by 64% on average, across ecosystems. Enormous potential also exists within managed landscapes, as agriculture and forestry are the dominant uses of land on Earth. Along with improving and stabilizing yields, enhancing microbial biodiversity in managed landscapes is a critical and underappreciated opportunity to build reservoirs, rather than deserts, of microbial life across our planet. As markets emerge to engineer the ecosystem microbiome, we can avert the mistakes of aboveground ecosystem management and avoid microbial monocultures of single high-performing microbial strains, which can exacerbate ecosystem vulnerability to pathogens and extreme events. Harnessing the planet's breadth of microbial life has the potential to transform ecosystem management, but it requires that we understand how to monitor and conserve the Earth's microbiome.
Indexed as
Identifiers
36192539What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.