A new study has shown that restoring environments to include a wider range of species can promote ‘good’ bacteria over ‘bad’ – with potential benefits for human health.
A new study has shown that restoring environments to include a wider range of species can promote ‘good’ bacteria over ‘bad’ – with potential benefits for human health.
University of Adelaide researchers report, in the journal Environmental International, that degraded, low biodiversity land and soils tend to harbour more ‘opportunistic’ bacteria, while healthy, biodiverse ecosystems favour more stable and specialist bacteria.
They found that the bacterial communities more commonly found in degraded landscapes had “potential pathogenic character”, with many in the same genera as prominent disease-causing bacteria Bacillus, Clostridium, Enterobacter, Legionella and Pseudomonas.
Restoring a more biodiverse ecosystem, however, changed the bacterial composition towards more potentially immune-boosting microbial diversity.
Read more at University of Adelaide
