Every nature lover knows field guides, those handy compendia of the natural world. There are thousands of titles for birds alone, but microbes have been largely overlooked, even though their total biomass is equivalent to all the plants and animals on Earth. And the field guides that do exist are far from comprehensive.
Evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen wants to change that.
"As a little kid, I carried around my binoculars and wanted to check off everything on my list," said Eisen, whose youthful hobby would lead to professional research on hummingbirds and butterflies, which was followed by his current focus on bacteria. "That’s how I was inspired to do a microbial field guide."
Eisen, whose laboratory is located in the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, proposed building a field guide for microbes at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual conference in Vancouver. He wants it to be a collaboration between experts and citizen scientists, like other field guides are.
The guide wouldn't just be a static book. Eisen, a field guide junky, has dozens of those, but he's also enthralled by iBird, an iPhone app replete with pictures and songs and spotting tips. "I dream of having the equivalent for microbes," he said during his talk.
Wired asked Eisen about his proposal.
Wired: What information would you include?
Jonathan Eisen: Just like bird field guides have raptors, sparrows and crows, this would have the major lineages and taxonomic subgroups, all the way down to species.
The second part would be ranges: the distribution patterns of microbes across the planet. Then there would be some text or visual description of niches where you’d find the organism.
Then it would have some description of the organism's biology. That would typically include appearance and behavior, but microbes don’t have a lot of things we would call behaviors -- so instead you’d have biochemistry and physiology. Does it make hydrogen? Does it convert carbon into sugar? You can imagine descriptions of their biology: Some might be predators. Some might be herbivores. Some might be everything in between.
A really important thing for field guides, in particular for the actual field, is the means to identify. For microbes that’s probably going to involve genetic signatures. It would also be really cool to have a checklist, which is a really popular part of other field guides. When you see something, you check it off your list and then you move on. It gives encouragement to go out and find things.
Images: 1) French postcard (c. 1900) depicting how scientists would look at microbes in the year 2000. Wikimedia Commons. 2) Jonathan Eisen displays his iBird field guide on his iPhone. (Jonathan Eisen)