Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, 4900 Meridian St NW, Huntsville, AL 35762, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Chicago State University, Chicago, IL 60628, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2022 Feb 5;61(6):2145-2153. doi: 10.1093/icb/icab047.
The current environmental changes stressing the Earth's biological systems urgently require study from an integrated perspective to reveal unexpected, cross-scale interactions, particularly between microbes and macroscale phenomena. Such interactions are the basis of a mechanistic understanding of the important connections between deforestation and emerging infectious disease, feedback between ecosystem disturbance and the gut microbiome, and the cross-scale effects of environmental pollutants. These kinds of questions can be answered with existing techniques and data, but a concerted effort is necessary to better coordinate studies and data sets from different disciplines to fully leverage their potential.
当前，地球生物系统面临的环境变化给我们带来了巨大压力，我们急需从综合的角度进行研究，以揭示意想不到的、跨尺度的相互作用，尤其是微生物与宏观现象之间的相互作用。这些相互作用是理解森林砍伐与新发传染病之间、生态系统干扰与肠道微生物组之间以及环境污染物跨尺度效应之间重要联系的机制的基础。这些问题可以利用现有技术和数据来回答，但需要协调努力，更好地协调来自不同学科的研究和数据集，以充分发挥它们的潜力。
