I recently came across this concept (talking to an AI, sorry) and just wondering about it. I’ve heard of mycelial networks and plants communicating with pheromones to mutual advantage, but 90%+ bacterial species influencing rhizomes are unknown? This is a potential “frontier” of human knowledge that…

Soil microbiology is certainly interesting, but its complexity and the minuscule scale make it hard to study. (Also, even defining bacterial species isn’t straightforward. You’ll see most studies using “OTUs” or “ASVs”.) You said that the agricultural revolution–I’m assuming you mean the First Agric…

Blockquote What doesn’t help is that many of the relevant bacterial “species” appear in low abundance, which makes it even harder to study or even find them, let alone without sequencing. Classification at such a granular level would possibly need to be bespoke? Taxons defined on a more behaviou…

[image] syd6o6: the agricultural revolution was many thousand years ago, seems odd. Humans have known about life since the beginning of humanity, but we only recently found out about DNA.

Bacterial dark matter

Nature Talk

Topic		Replies	Views
Microscopic Biodiversity Nature Talk	14	292	February 19, 2025
What's the best way to identify microorganisms? Nature Talk question , projects	10	135	April 30, 2026
You can discover new species EVERYWHERE! Nature Talk	17	1145	August 4, 2024
Non-iconic taxa appear under unidentified/unknown observations Bug Reports	3	1455	February 9, 2020
Anyone have all eight kingdoms? (Gotta Catch 'Em All!) Nature Talk	50	2425	August 11, 2021

Bacterial dark matter

Related topics