Prairie microbes could aid region’s restoration

Guest post by Gabriel Popkin

Diverse tallgrass prairies once covered about 10 percent of the United States, but farming and grazing have reduced the habitats to a handful of small remnants.

Scientists studied the genes of bacterial communities living in some of those prairie remnants and discovered that the grassy areas have far more Verrucomicrobia, a little studied group of bacteria, than agricultural soils do. These bacteria are experts in breaking down complex carbon-containing structures such as the roots of prairie plants.

The finding, which appears in the Nov. 1 Science, could assist thousands of prairie restoration projects throughout the Midwest.