Chew on this if you dare:  Have you ever stopped to consider what the human life form, indeed any higher life form, really is biologically, and how it integrates with the overall ecological environment?   

Introduction

Simplistically, many still think of the representational "tree of life" in terms of plants and animals, but such are just the outermost branches.  A more realistic, and necessarily more complex, representational view would include the microbial world with its mergers and symbiosis of life forms.  Even so, such would only convey, by analogy, a rather incomplete set of assembly instructions, as opposed to a fuller understanding of the evolution and functional aspects of our overall ecological environment. 

Axiom:  The overall ecosystem is a bio-mechanism of all life forms in a biosphere, with the biodiversity being relative to the complexity of the biosphere.  Each life form contributes to the whole, extracting fuel and/or purpose from, and providing fuel and/or purpose for, other life forms and the biosphere.  The bio-mechanism is self balancing, and when internal and external stimuli affecting balance occur, the ecosystem will see changes towards some new state of balance, affecting whatever members as necessary.  Many minute changes are ongoing in an evolutionary process, but as the extent of change increases they become more abrupt.  In these changes the higher life forms are at the greatest risk because they can not adapt as quickly and/or to the extent that microbial life can.   

Modern prophets, such as Rachel Carson, Lester Brown, and Herman Daly have, for decades, been desperately trying to inform the rest of us of the unsustainability of our modern advancement.  At the same time, those that benefit the most materially and/or institutional-wise from this advancement have, with their shortsighted interests, diffused objective appraisal with an exponential amount of misinformation.  

This paper tries to present a layman's view of our relationship with the microbial world, and how, to our own detriment, we are affecting such in the overall ecological environment of cause and effect.  One needn't look to the stars to feel insignificant, but rather understand what the vast majority of life on this Earth really is, and realize that such has weathered, and in good part contributed to, all the cataclysmic changes in Earth's biosphere.   

What Are We?

We think of ourselves as individual life forms, each with our own skills, knowledge, experiences, feelings, behavior, interests, and physical characteristics - some even believe we are superior life forms.  From a species standpoint, science has been chipping away claims of uniqueness in discovering that things like culture, tool making, language, and likely even self-consciousness are not exclusive to mankind.  Except for  physical (i.e. morphological) and some functional (i.e. metabolic) characteristics however, all this uniqueness is a product of cognitive illusion formed by varying environmental stimuli, with a dash of instinctual/biological influences.  As to any superiority, all higher life forms are at a distinct disadvantage in the overall ecological system because of their very limited adaptability.  The predominate distinction mankind has demonstrated is that we are doing more to destroy life on Earth as we know it, and ourselves in the balance, than any other species that has ever existed.  

Biologically, over 90% of the cells that make up the human body belong to nonhuman microorganisms - mostly bacteria, but also a smattering of fungi and other microbes.  While these microbes are just a fraction of our overall bulk, they make up the huge majority of cells living on and within us.  Our genes constantly exchange molecular substances, involved in our growth, development, and reproduction, with these microbial genes.  Humans are not individuals, but rather colonies of creatures that are not just casual hitchhikers.  The human body is a mini-ecosystem within the overall ecological system in which we exist.  While some of these microbial hitchhikers are capable of causing harm to our bodies, most are so essential to well-being that humans couldn't live without them.  

As an example of our very being, we depend on these microbes for our state of health.  Microbes living on the surfaces of our bodies (external and internal), and of other higher life forms, confer protection by playing an active role in encouraging the maturation of our immune system, and denying disease-causing microbes the foothold they need to colonize our bodies and do damage.  Another example is that our digestive system relies on bacteria for assistance, allowing us to gain nutrition from plant matter that our enzymes and acids can't degrade.  In addition, it's bacteria in our our digestive system that produce certain essential vitamins such as B1, B12, and B6 that we can't produce ourselves.  Recent research suggests that fluctuations in the composition of microbial communities in our bodies contribute to diabetes, asthma, obesity and a variety of other disorders - what a revelation.  

Even beyond our bodily ecosystem, microbes were integral in creating the environment in which we exist, and are essential in maintaining such.  Without these microscopic companions, our planet wouldn't survive as we know it.  As just one example, we depend on soil to grow the plants that nourish us and our livestock, but without microbes, nutrients would not be recycled to a usable form for plants.  A single teaspoon of garden soil contains over 1,000,000,000 bacteria, about 120,000 fungi, and 25,000 algae.  

Microbes such as phytoplankton also serve as the nutrient source that indirectly feeds all marine animals.  Seafood has diminished because of over-harvesting, but more importantly biodiversity is not significantly rebounding with conservation efforts, in part because of changing microbial communities in the oceans due to pollution and habitat destruction.  Microbes comprise more than 90% of the total oceanic biomass. 

Additionally, though less critically, microbes have been used for centuries to provide us with prepared food such as bread, yogurt, and cheese.   

Our overall knowledge of microbes and their relationships is sketchy thus far, but it's obvious that to change or [attempt to] remove them would spell the demise of mankind.  Moreover, our tinker-toy state of science, especially as limited by commercial interests, is aggravating our problems.  Better science would be directed at how we might promote the microbial colonies that make our life form possible, without creating imbalance in the overall ecological system that would undo our efforts.  

What Are Microbes?

They are the oldest form of life on earth.  As far as we have found evidence, microbes have existed over three and a half billion years, from back when the Earth was still burning off the heat of its creation, and was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point.  Microbes have been around for billions of years because they are able to adapt to the ever-changing environment, and play a considerable role in shaping such.  During this time the biosphere has endured considerable changes and random catastrophes, any one of which would annihilate modern civilization, and with it most, if not all, of humanity.  

There are conservatively at least some "n" number of nonillions (1030 or millions of trillions of trillions)  of microbes in the world, that account for over two thirds of the Earth's biomass.  There are more microbes on one human's hand than there are people on the entire planet.  It's no exaggeration to say that microbes run the world, controlling every ecological process.  Microbes are everywhere - in the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink, even in the harshest, most extreme parts of the world.  Yet many people are generally ignorant of, at least, the extent of their existence, and others have thoroughly warped notions of the roles they play in all life of Earth.  

Scientifically, the term "micro-organism" includes two groups of life forms:

Prokaryotes (pro-carry-oats) are organisms with no nuclei in their cells, which resemble ancestral microbes that "crawled" out of the primordial soup.   This group includes archaea and bacteria.  

Eukaryotes (you-carry-oats)  are organisms with true nucleated cells.  This group includes protists, and some fungi, as well as some animals and plants.  The other fungi, animals, and plants are also eukaryotes, only they are macroscopic.

More generally speaking though, microbes may be thought of as encompassing not only the above, but herein another little player in the microscopic world:  

Archaea (ar-ke-a) are living fossils that are providing clues to the earliest forms of life on Earth.  They resemble bacteria, but their cell walls contain different kinds of amino acids and sugars, and though some of their genes are similar to bacteria genes, and others are more like those of eukaryotes, they also have genes that aren't like any found elsewhere.  Many are found in the most extreme environments on Earth, temperature wise, acidic wise, pressure wise, and even in the absence of free oxygen.

Bacteria, among the earliest forms of life that appeared on Earth, are thought of by many as germs, but for the most part actually make our life form possible.  Though single celled, they're an amazingly complex and fascinating group of creatures. Bacteria have been found that can live in temperatures above the boiling point and in cold that would freeze your blood. They "eat" everything from sugar and starch to sunlight, sulfur and iron. There's even a species of bacteria that can withstand blasts of radiation a thousand times greater than would kill a human being.  

Protists are not plants, animals, or fungi, but act enough like them that scientists believe protists paved the way for the evolution of early plants, animals, and fungi.  The plant-like protists (like algae) are vital primary producers in ecosystems.  The animal-like protists (including the amoeba) help maintain the balance of microbial life.  The fungus-like protists (like slime molds and water molds) are important for recycling nutrients.  Some protists overlap these categorizations, and others are responsible for a range of serious human diseases, such as malaria and sleeping sickness.  

Fungi straddle the realms of microbiology and macrobiology.  They range in size from the single-celled organism we know as yeast, to the largest known living organism on Earth - a 3.5-mile-wide mushroom.  Occurring worldwide, most fungi are largely invisible to the naked eye, living for the most part in soil, dead matter, and as symbionts of plants, animals, or other fungi. They perform an essential role in all ecosystems in decomposing organic matter and are indispensable in nutrient cycling and exchange.  Some species of the fungi are significant pathogens of humans and other animals, and can cause losses of crops and food spoilage.  

Viruses are strange things that straddle the fence between living and non-living, and thus aren't technically microbes.  A virus is basically a tiny bundle of genetic material (either DNA or RNA) carried in a shell called the viral coat, or capsid, which is made up of bits of protein called capsomeres. Some viruses have an additional layer around this coat called an envelope.  Unable to do much of anything on their own, they are dormant until they can infiltrate host cells to reproduce, often wreaking havoc and causing disease.  Viruses play the role of keeping other populations in check, especially competitive dominants, facilitating biodiversity, and through the transfer of genes between species generate genetic variability and evolutionary change.  

To put microbial existence in perspective, the following timeline gives an overview of just what they have weathered, and played a role in.  The Earth is  roughly 4.6 billion years old.  

• 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes)
• 3 billion years since photosynthesizing cyanobacteria evolve using water as a reducing agent and producing oxygen as waste product  
• 2.3 to 2.7  billion years since the earliest hypothesized ice age
• 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes)
• 1 billion years of multicellular life
• 850 to 630  million years since the earliest well-documented global glaciation may have reduced the diversity of life
• 600 million years of simple animals
• 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans)
• 550 million years of complex animals
• 540  million years since the accumulation of atmospheric oxygen allows the formation of an ozone layer blocking ultraviolet radiation
• 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians
• 488 million years since a series of mass extinctions eliminated many brachiopods and conodonts and severely reduced the number of trilobite species  
• 475 million years of land plants
• 460 to 430  million years since a minor ice age
• 440 to 450  million years since the second largest of the five major extinctions in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct - 27% of all families and 57% of all genera went extinct
• 400 million years of insects and seeds
• 360 to 375  million years since a prolonged series of extinctions eliminated about 70% of all species
• 360 million years of amphibians
• 300 million years of reptiles
• 251 million years since Earth's largest extinction killed 53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species and an estimated 70% of land species (including plants, insects, and vertebrate animals) - 57% of all families and 83% of all genera went extinct
• 205 million years since about 20% of all marine families (55% genera) as well as most non-dinosaurian archosaurs, most therapsids, and the last of the large amphibians were eliminated - 23% of all families and 48% of all genera went extinct
• 200  million years ago is the first accepted evidence for viruses existing (at least, the group Geminiviridae) - viruses are still poorly understood and may have arisen before "life" itself, or may be a more recent phenomenon
• 200 million years of mammals
• 150 million years of birds
• 130 million years of flowers
• 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out, opening the way for mammals and birds to become the dominant land vertebrates
• 2.5 million years since the appearance of Homo
• 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today
• 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out  
• 20,000  years since the last glacial maximum  

The main point in the above is that despite the evolution and extinction of various macro life forms, and all the biosphere changes, microbes of great variety continue to be highly successful and dominate the Earth, with the majority of both biomass and species being prokaryotes.  Microbial life can adapt to new environmental and relationship conditions in a very small fraction of the time that higher life forms can, and to a much greater extent.

Microbial life can adapt, even to extreme changes, for a number of reasons.  One is that there is great variability within these life forms, and they live in biologically diverse, interdependent communities - those that survive changes quickly repopulate via asexual cell division.  Another is that those without a specific resistance can gain resistance from even unrelated neighbors in a phenomenon called horizontal gene transfer.  Another very important reason is that unicellular organisms deal with environmental change by adapting  biochemically - an organism which is only one cell can make changes in its internal chemistry,  and can experiment with its chemical processes and how it uses its amino acids.  In a multicellular animal or plant, the way that its cells work together make fundamental chemical changes too disruptive to be practical. 

Whether our existence is the result of microbes finding us convenient and economical in the evolutionary process is not the question or the point herein, but rather the point is that microbes and the evolutionary process can and will continue without us, just as they have thus far.  Over 99% of macro species that ever lived are now extinct, with the background rate being two to five species every million years, and the five major extinctions in Earth's history.  There is mounting evidence that we are at present in the midst of another major extinction event, possibly one of the fastest ever, and mostly of our own making, but microbial life is adapting as it always has and can easily add mankind to the extinction list.  

Winds Of Change

In the natural order of Earth, the biosphere and life forms influence each other, and are always changing and evolving at varying rates, mostly unnoticed in less than geological time.  However, this process has, in less than the blink of an eye in geological time, brought forth mankind - a life form with an unprecedented potential for maybe good, but certainly self destructive change.  

If in considering actions, as opposed to words, the good outweighed the bad, mankind's progress could be seen as potentially sustainable, but unfortunately the reverse is obvious when considered objectively.  Mankind is severely stressing ecosystems around the world in many ways, such as contributions to accelerating climate change and air pollution, population, land use, over utilization of natural resources, monocropping, chemicals and medicines, GMOs and selective breeding practices, mining, increasing invasive species, predator decimation, reduced herbivore diversity, and so on.  

Biodiversity, of microbes, their mergers and symbiosis of life forms, and macro life forms, is essential to a sustainable ecological environment, at least in the sense of one in which mankind can exist.  When natural ecosystems are stressed, natural disease outbreaks are more frequent, and have longer-term, negative impacts on ecosystems and on society.  Examples of this are the current pollinator problems, and increasing pandemic threats.  The big picture can be viewed as that of the natural order cleaning up and redirecting towards whatever more balanced state, regardless of how alien that might be to any single life form like humans.  

Increasing domination of ecosystems by humans is steadily transforming them into depauperate systems, and the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has emerged as a central issue in ecological and environmental sciences during the last decade.  A new scientific approach, called metagenomics, is being employed to detect mini-ecosystem stress.  It's based on specific "healthy" mini-ecosystem "fingerprints" that reflect the community of microbes in such.  When a fingerprint begins to vary (in a natural sense adapt and evolve) it highlights ecosystem stress before macro evidence is observable.  We're still a long way from incorporating microbial monitoring into large scale environmental sensing networks though. 

The words "stressed ecological systems" don't seem to strike a very imperative note with far too many, but in reality such is the observable state of change to something very different.   Just how different will have some correlation with the causes we might recognize, but the specifics of the full extent are subject to nature's grand design of balance, which we're not even close to comprehending, or maybe even recognizing.  As a simplistic example, consider the many variations and levels of predator prey relationships in nature, and some of the more easily recognized consequences as populations in those relationships, and/or the biosphere, vary.  

If we focus in on the roots of what precipitates ecosystem stress, we invariably get down to changes in biodiversity, and relationships within such, of microbes that make all higher life forms possible.  Then, if we consider what we are doing to influence detrimental [to us] changes in microbial communities, major factors that stand out are agrochemicals (pesticides, herbicides, and veterinary medicines), GMOs, and our obsessive, self destructive, indiscriminate war against pathogens affecting humans.  

First we create ecological imbalance with our industrial agriculture and monocropping, and, using agrochemical products that generate considerable profit in the short term, we persist in trying to create an artificial balance in our favor, even with all the detrimental evidence.  If you're interested in learning how we took this path, a good starting point is the book "The War On Bugs" by Will Allen.  

As awareness of the dangers of agrochemicals to human health grew, we came up with GMOs in our war with nature.  Another high profit product which might just also facilitate control of world agriculture - monopoly being every entrepreneur's dream.  And, of course, some chemical products are still part of the package.  

The whole idea of patentable so-called non-human life forms is nothing more than another commercial device.  Given the mergers and symbiosis of life forms, our very existence dependent on microbes, the tinker-toy extent of the science, and loosing such in the natural world, we're accelerating ecosystem stress and its consequences.  Just the idea that we, mere humans with limited and biased understanding, can redesign nature is preposterous, but as long as wealth can be accumulated in the illusion of doing so, the illusion will be heavily promoted.  

While we're cruising along this path, growing ever more less nutritious foods, and producing even more unhealthy processed foods with chemical additives, we're propping up an unsustainable false economy.  Reduced nutrition increases consumption, which plays into the hands of agribusiness, and reduced health plays into the hands of the medical establishment.  That such is accepted as human advancement is pure hypocrisy.  

Even more importantly, what seems to be mostly overlooked in this approach is that the agrochemicals and GMOs are effecting significant changes in the microbial communities we depend on for our very existence.  Microbes are adapting to man's environmental influences, but with no emphasis on furthering any particular existing higher life forms like ourselves, as readily evidenced.  

As if all this were not enough, we have also "discovered" pathogens, and are waging an all out indiscriminate war against the microbial world.  Few stop to understand that such is actually self destructive, because biologically over 90% of the cells that make up the human body belong to nonhuman microorganisms.  Even if we develop much more targeted approaches, in trying to create an artificial balance in our favor, such will inevitably be thwarted by the natural order of microbial adaptability and evolution, because we truly don't understand such sufficiently (if at all).  Just one little example here is our overuse of antibiotics and various chemoprophylactics, to which resistance is accelerating to the point where we are increasingly left without even emergency defense measures.  

Already, some diseases that were previously susceptible to a variety of antibiotics are now untreatable.   According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 70 percent of infections that people get while hospitalized are now resistant to at least one antibiotic.  Resistance to antibiotics is rapidly outpacing our ability to synthesize new drugs, which should give one a good idea of just how advanced our science really is [not].

Since microbes were discovered, researchers have focused mostly on bacteria that cause disease.  However, our narrow minded approach with the profligate use of antibiotics, and antiseptic lifestyles, has deterred the transfer of vital strains of bacteria that have swarmed in our systems since early humans emerged.  Whole strains of beneficial bacteria are disappearing from humans, especially in industrialized countries, leaving us naked to even more pathogens. 

The bioaccumulation of medicines (especially antibiotics), although enriching the pharmaceutical industry, is having an increasingly detrimental effect on our own microbiota.  Such will continue as long as so many buy into the commercial device of fear, rather than natural health.  

For an example of how agribusiness is creating havoc in the overall ecosystem, read chapter four "The Feedlot" in Michael Pollan's 2007 book "The Omnivore's Dilemma."  

Quantitatively Speaking

Antibiotic sales total more than $8 billion worldwide each year. That is more than 50 million pounds produced each year, nearly half of which are prescribed for human use. Discharge of wastewater from pharmaceutical plants has been associated with an increase in the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in indicator organisms.  Sewage from hospitals and pharmaceutical plants has been shown to contribute to antibiotic resistance in treatment plants.  Rivers contaminated with urban effluent and agricultural runoff have also been shown to have greater antibiotic resistant bacterial populations than areas upstream of the contamination source. 

As to our antiseptic lifestyles, over 700 “antibacterial” household products have been introduced in just the past five years. These include such items as sweat socks, toothpastes, kitchen plastics, cement and paints. The more common antibacterial ingredients in these formulations are triclosan, quartenary ammonium compounds, alcohol, and bleach. These products wind up in the sewage or landfill after being used in our households.  Increases in microbial resistance to each of these compounds have been documented in nature and in human pathogens.  

About 300,000 pounds of antibiotics are used in plant production each year.  They are sprayed on high-value crops such as fruit trees to prevent bacterial infections.  In reality this is increasing resistant bacteria on our crops, not to mention sales dollars. Not all of the spray remains on the fruit. Most of the antibiotics are washed into the soil and eventually end up in the ground water.  

About 24 million pounds of antibiotics are commonly added at sub-therapeutic levels to animal feeds as growth promoters, and to fishery waters.  Bacteria such as drug resistant Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia coli and Enterococcus have increased clinically as animal antibiotic use has risen.  The use of oxytetracycline in aquaculture has been shown to cause a seasonal shift in bacterial species towards Enterobacteriaceae and is associated with increased antibiotic resistance.  

What do you suppose will happen to much of agriculture when there are no more pollinators?  In colony collapse disorder (CCD), honey bee colonies inexplicably lose their workers.  CCD has resulted in a loss of 50 to 90% of colonies in beekeeping operations across the United States.  An unbiased metagenomic approach [previously described] was used to survey microflora in CCD hives, normal hives, and imported royal jelly.  Candidate pathogens were screened for significance of association with CCD by the examination of samples collected from several sites over a period of 3 years. The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus of bees, was strongly correlated with CCD - which means it is likely not the only culprit.  Such a glaring example of ecosystem stress should in all rights be a wake-up call, but too many believe our (commercially influenced) "advanced" science and technology can plug the hole in the dike.  Isn't that thinking what created the problem?  

Agrochemical use currently exceeds 500 million kg each year in the U.S. alone (as of 2004). An unquantifiable but considerable portion of this total does not reach, or leaves, its target, and contaminates air, water, and soil invariability affecting all biological systems.  

As of 2007 approximately 114 million hectares of GMO crops were grown worldwide.  That's up from about 2 million hectares in 1996.  About half of the current GMO crop area is in the United States. Other main GM cultivating countries are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India and China. Worldwide, mainly four different types of GM crops are grown - soybeans, maize, cotton and rapeseed. While the bulk of GMO crops are destined for animal feed, the remainder are for direct human consumption, so directly or indirectly we are served up these products of commercial device.  They are also infiltrating other "natural" life forms through means such as horizontal gene transfer.  To better understand GMOs, and their impact on the ecosystem, see the article "GMOs: Frankenstein in a business suit?".  

Did you know that "GloFish" were the first genetically modified animal to be sold as a pet?  Is there no end to our foolishness?  

There is nothing subtle about our self destructive ecological footprint, yet we persist in our ignorance and greed.  

Conclusion

It's becoming increasingly difficult for most to pursue a more natural lifestyle - that is, one more in line with the natural order.  However, as we drift ever further away from such, it will become impossible with changes in the microbial ecology that may, very likely, unceremoniously leave mankind behind.  

The principle herein is "Humans can't survive without a biodiversity of microbes functioning in a manner that makes our life form possible."  Regardless of human actions, microbes will survive some geological time after mankind no longer inhabits the Earth.  

This article was written to illuminate the phrase "as nature goes we go" introduced in the story "Nature's Magic Mirror."