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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Fabrice StephensonORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Applied Microbiology International. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site-for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.comIn May 2025, the “Conservation in a Microbial World” conference was hosted at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography to address the lack of microbial representation in international conservation frameworks (i.e. International Union for Conservation of Nature—IUCN). Organized by Drs. Redford, Gilbert, Friedman, and Rodríguez, the meeting explored the importance of the microbial world in conservation and what can be done to include microbes in global conservation. The meeting gathered together experts in fungi, bacteria, and viruses with backgrounds in climate science, genomics, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and human health, spanning research, industry, conservation, and policy. Key themes included: how to communicate the importance of microbes, how to conserve microbes themselves, and how microbes could be integrated into existing conservation. The primary outcome was the launch of the IUCN Species Survival Commission—Microbial Conservation Specialist Group. This initiative marks a pivotal step toward incorporating microbial life into global biodiversity conservation policy and practice.
Author(s): Kunselman E, Minnis V, Kodera S, Buschmann MM, Jones A, Dehgan A, Hartman Scholz A, Boetius A, Hochkirch A, Dupont C, Walzer C, Averill C, Endy D, Stephenson F, Wang F, Mueller G, Jansson JK, Rodriguez JP, Zengler K, Redford KH, Haraoui L-P, Dominguez Bello MG, Lurgi M, Lamberski N, Cox N, Peixoto R, Knight R, Friedman R, Phelan R, Gibbons SM, Ishaq SL, Brooks T, Souza V, Gilbert J, Allard SM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Sustainable Microbiology
Year: 2025
Volume: 2
Issue: 4
Online publication date: 04/11/2025
Acceptance date: 17/10/2025
Date deposited: 09/06/2026
ISSN (electronic): 2755-1970
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/sumbio/qvaf026
DOI: 10.1093/sumbio/qvaf026
Data Access Statement: No data were created or analyzed in this article.
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