There are more bacteria in the soil than in water

2002/07/03 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Mikrobiologia

According to some studies by British scientists, there are many more bacteria on earth than in the oceans. In the oceans there are two million species of bacteria, a ton of land estimates that there may be four million species.

However, the main novelty is not the calculation itself, but the method used. The method of counting commonly used is genetic: different genetic sequences are taken and bacteria are identified. On the contrary, this group of scientists has counted the most abundant bacterial species for calculation.

The principle used for the calculation of species is as follows: if in the samples taken the most common bacterial species meet much of the total population, the number of other species is much lower. On the contrary, if the proportion of common species is low, the number of rarer species increases considerably.

According to the results obtained, in the oceans 25% of all species are common. On Earth only 10%. According to this, in one milliliter of ocean water there are 160 species of bacteria and in one milligram of land between 6,400 and 38,000. They say that the data obtained correspond to the existing genetic data.

This difference is mainly due to the medium in which the ocean is a much more homogeneous medium than the soil.