A Call to Action: Preserve Microbes, Too
In museums and herbaria, plant and animal specimens preserved from the past act as “biological archives,” capturing generations of genetic, social and ecological change.
Without archived specimens, ecological history is vulnerable to erasure, and insights on how life responds to change are fundamentally lost.
Preservation is well-established across the plant and animal kingdoms, yet little effort has been made to preserve microbial communities.
In a call to action published in, ߣƵ Fellow argues for microbial preservation. While current microbial archival efforts focus on the human gut microbiome, Eren urges researchers to expand the archives to reflect planetary biodiversity.
“As we begin to recognize microbial life as a fundamental driver and indicator of planetary health,” Eren writes, “the need to address this archival gap becomes increasingly urgent.”
Citation
Eren, A. Murat (2025) Gifting future scientists the past through well-preserved specimens of modern microbial ecosystems. Nature Communications, DOI: