Brendan Bohannan and an international team of microbiologists have revealed a new concern about deforestation in the Amazon rainforest — a troubling net loss in the diversity among the microbial organisms responsible for a functioning ecosystem.  See feature in Around the O.

The new research in the Amazon Rainforest was recently published in PNAS  (read the original study) and has since been the subject of a podcast by EarthSky.  http://earthsky.org/science-wire/amazons-diversity-loss-shows-up-in-the-soil   In addition, Science Magazine has just published a news article on Bohannan’s PNAS paper (see ECOLOGY: Microbial Conversion).