新種生存委員会が保全における重大な空白を埋める(New Species Survival Commission Fills Critical Gap in Conservation)

2025-09-12 カリフォルニア大学サンディエゴ校(UCSD)

国際自然保護連合(IUCN)は、これまで見過ごされてきた微生物多様性を保護するため、初めての「微生物保全専門家委員会」を設立した。委員長はUCサンディエゴのジャック・ギルバート教授とKAUSTのラケル・ペイショート教授が務め、バクテリア、真菌、ウイルスなど人類と地球の健康に不可欠な微生物を対象に、絶滅の危機にある種の特定や保全策を検討する。対象にはサンゴ礁の微生物群や南極の極限環境に棲む真菌群、さらには工業化ライフスタイルによって消失しつつあるヒトの腸内細菌も含まれる。委員会は微生物版レッドリストの作成、保全に資する微生物(例:サンゴの強化や作物の耐性向上)の利用枠組み開発などを進め、世界的な生物多様性政策に微生物を組み込むことを目指す。成果は Nature Microbiology に発表された。

A new species survival commission will examine the health of microbes, including bacteria that make up the complex microbiome from coral reefs. Microscope image of the coral Stylophora pistillata. Photo: Or Ben-Zvi

<関連情報>

微生物多様性の世界的保護策としてIUCN微生物保全専門家グループを発足
Launching the IUCN Microbial Conservation Specialist Group as a global safeguard for microbial biodiversity

Jack A. Gilbert,Raquel S. Peixoto,Amber Hartman Scholz,Maria Gloria Dominguez Bello,Lise Korsten,Gabriele Berg,Brajesh Singh,Antje Boetius,Fengping Wang,Chris Greening,Kelly Wrighton,Seth Bordenstein,Janet K. Jansson,Jay T. Lennon,Valeria Souza,Torsten Thomas,Don Cowan,Thomas W. Crowther,Nguyen Nguyen,Lucy Harper,Louis-Patrick Haraoui,Suzanne L. Ishaq & Kent Redford
Nature Microbiology Published:12 September 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-02113-5

Despite its importance^1,2, microbial life is largely absent from global conservation frameworks^3,4. Launched in July 2025, the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG) was established as a Species Survival Commission (SSC) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN is the world’s leading authority in environmental science and policy, renowned for shaping conservation priorities across governments, non-governmental organizations and international treaties. The MCSG convenes a coalition of microbiologists, ecologists, traditional knowledge experts and conservation leaders to develop and advocate for conservation tools, strategies and policies that explicitly integrate microbiology into global biodiversity governance. Despite the importance of microorganisms for ecosystem function, their role has been seen as too abstract or complex to integrate into policy. Elevating microbial perspectives within global conservation has required overcoming a deep-rooted tendency to overlook the invisible⁵.

First, we will build a global network, including experts from low- and middle-income countries and Indigenous communities, to advise on conservation targets and build an evaluation schema for assessing conservation priorities. To ensure broad and inclusive representation, we are actively inviting experts through a snowball approach, encouraging nominations from our members, and issuing open calls for participation via the IUCN and MCSG websites. We will also prioritize language accessibility, regional balance, and engagement with early-career researchers and traditional knowledge holders to foster equitable participation. Second, we will map conservation priorities by compiling and visualizing global data on microbial ecosystems that are currently threatened by habitat destruction and anthropogenic activity^6,7. Third, we will develop microorganism-specific Red List criteria, the globally recognized system used by the IUCN to classify species at high risk of extinction. Our aim is to incorporate microbial features, including metabolic and ecological resilience, rather than individual species abundance, which is more typical with Red List criteria for macroorganisms. Finally, we will map existing microbial conservation projects, such as microorganism-assisted coral restoration⁸ and soil microbiome rewilding⁹, and develop criteria to incorporate them into current IUCN efforts¹⁰, optimize their application and assess their success. Throughout, we will integrate microbial experts into other IUCN SSC groups (such as those exploring conservation priorities for threatened fungi and wildlife, including corals, amphibians and insects) to ensure that specific microbiological considerations are consistently represented wherever conservation decisions are made. These deliverables create the foundation — data, tools, success stories and people — that we will build on over the next 5 years. The MCSG steering committee is composed of appointed vice-chairs representing diverse expertise and geographies (initially, these will be the co-authors of this comment, chaired by Jack Gilbert and Raquel Peixoto). This committee will guide strategic decisions through structured consensus-building processes and, when needed, formal votes.