Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. Photo: Jeff Heckman.
A letter published today by co-author Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, in Nature Microbiology highlights how human activities are rapidly transforming global microbial ecosystems, with major consequences for health, agriculture, and the environment.
Dominguez-Bellow and the other authors argue that microbial diversity, often overlooked in conservation, underpins essential processes from soil fertility to human immunity.
They call for urgent, coordinated global action to safeguard microbial heritage, integrating microbiome science into biodiversity frameworks, policy, and sustainable development. By framing microbes as both vulnerable and indispensable, the paper positions microbial stewardship as critical to planetary health in the Anthropocene.
They write that, “despite its importance, microbial life is largely absent from global conservation frameworks. Launched in July 2025, the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG) was established as a Species Survival Commission (SSC) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The IUCN is the world’s leading authority in environmental science and policy, renowned for shaping conservation priorities across governments, non-governmental organizations and international treaties. The MCSG convenes a coalition of microbiologists, ecologists, traditional knowledge experts and conservation leaders to develop and advocate for conservation tools, strategies and policies that explicitly integrate microbiology into global biodiversity governance. Despite the importance of microorganisms for ecosystem function, their role has been seen as too abstract or complex to integrate into policy. Elevating microbial perspectives within global conservation has required overcoming a deep-rooted tendency to overlook the invisible.”
