The Many Ecosystem Services

The diversity of soil bacterial communities is immense and provides a variety of ecosystem services. Functions constituting the vast biodiversity of soil bacteria include bioremediation, nitrogen fixation, and the production of antibiotic metabolites. Serving as an approach to remove soil contaminants, bioremediation is an important function of soil bacteria. The contamination of pollutants, such as oil spills, creates toxicity on soil ecosystems. Albeit pollutants produce a destructive impact, bioremediation transforms perilous materials into benign compounds utilizing microorganisms. Although toxins can enter the soil and impose harm on the functions of soil bacteria, the role of nitrogen fixation and symbiosis help fertilize the soil.

Within some soil bacterial communities is rhizobia, a symbiotic bacterium located with nodules in their root systems to produce nitrogen compounds where fixed nitrogen is released upon plant death. The nitrogen compounds provide plant growth and create competition with other plants in the ecosystem. Along with fostering compounds for growth, antibiotics from soil bacteria can increase seedling survival.

The antibiotic pyrrolnitrin derived from Pseudomonas fluorescence when placed in soil infected with Rhizoctonia solani, an antagonist to pyrrolnitrin, the cottonseed seedling survival increased (Howell and Stipanovic 1979). Acting as an antagonist, pyrrolnitrin like other antibiotics is effective in damping-off pathogens and increasing seedling growth. Soil bacteria maintain sustainability and a multifunctional ecosystem through soil community composition functions Soil bacteria play a fundamental role in nitrogen fixation.

Within soil bacteria communities or within plant roots, nitrogen gases sourced from Earth’s atmosphere are transformed into solid nitrogen compounds. Two different forms of bacteria are found within the soil with different functions including free-living bacteria and mutualistic bacteria.

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The free-living bacteria live and spread throughout the soil, while mutualistic bacteria can fix ninety percent of Earth’s nitrogen since mutualist bacteria live within the roots of plants. Like the location of mutualist bacteria within the roots of plants, nitrogen-fixing bacteria are associated with leguminous and non-leguminous plants. Through differentiation on the host plant on the root nodule, leguminous plants obtain nitrogen from their relationship with rhizobia. This symbiotic relationship increases the quantity of nitrogen-fixing bacterial species that can colonize the surface of plant roots.

The purpose of this study was to isolate, characterize, and identify an unknown species of bacteria collected from soil in Flagstaff, Arizona. Morphological and physiological characteristics of an unknown species of soil bacteria were compared with characteristics of known bacterial species using Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. The soil bacteria genus and species will not be isolated through identification techniques performed in the laboratory, for it has been recognized that biodiversity within soil communities among soil bacteria is not fully understood. The high soil diversity has yielded the identification of thousands of taxa contained in a gram of soil. Thus, the vast and unknown diversity creates difficulty in identifying the genus and species of the environmental isolate.