A new Species Survival Commission (SSC) has been established by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), dedicated specifically to the preservation of microbial diversity: the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG).
The group’s mission is to bring microorganisms more prominently into global conservation strategies. This includes developing microbe-specific criteria for the IUCN Red List, mapping threatened microbial ecosystems, and integrating microbiology into international biodiversity policy.
Microbiota Vault collaborators Jack Gilbert, Raquel Peixoto, Amber Hartman Scholz, Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, Seth Bordenstein, and Janet K. Jansson are among the founding members of the new Species Survival Commission (SSC).
Read more:
Gilbert, J.A., Peixoto, R.S., Scholz, A.H. et al. Launching the IUCN Microbial Conservation Specialist Group as a global safeguard for microbial biodiversity. Nat Microbiol 10, 2359–2360 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-02113-5