engleski

Microorganisms - early indicators of anthropogenic perturbations within the environment

In a time of rapid, constant and extensive global change all ecosystems are facing tremendous pressures driven by human activities. Pollution from urban, industry, agriculture and aquaculture, habitat degradation, introduction of invasive species and climate change are affecting all components of different terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. As indicated by the Nobel Prize chemist Paul Crutzen, our planet is currently in the new epoch called Anthropocene, in which human imprint is causing threat to sustainability of the environmental quality. An array of studies focusing on disturbed environments reported a strong link between anthropogenic pressures and changes in microbial assemblages, with alternations observed on the level of their diversity, structure, abundance, activity and/or biogeochemical cycle rate. Even though microorganisms represent backbone and the base of all natural ecosystems, play pivotal role in mediating biogeochemical cycling, carbon sequestration and elimination of pollutant consequently providing an array of ecosystem services for human wellbeing, microbial communities are still neglected in the environmental quality legislation protocols. In this presentation, following examples of different research projects including “Development and evaluation of innovative tools to estimate the ecotoxicological impact of low dose pesticide application in agriculture on soil functional microbial biodiversity” (ECOFUN-MICROBIODIV, FP7) and two project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation “Exploring the impact of pharmaceutical wastewaters on the composition and antibiotic resistance profile of exposed microbial communities” (WINAR) and “Bio-tracing Adriatic water masses (BIOTA) issue of potential usage of microorganism as early and valuable indicators of anthropogenic perturbations within the environment will be raised and discussed. Due to the complexity, heterogeneity, plasticity and resilience of microbial communities, quest to find this missing link between changes in microbial assemblages and ecosystem health it still facing many difficulties and needs systematic and organized approach.

microbial community ; bioindicator ; pollution ; anthropogenic pressure

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