Question

44. Microorganisms help both to maintain and to disrupt the health of ecosystems. Give at least one example of each with an explanation of how they maintain and disrupt ecosystem health.

Answer 1

Microorganisms such as bacteria, protists, viruses, and fungi can have harmful or beneficial effects on the ecosystem.

An example of a microorganism with a positive role in the ecosystem health would be bacteria that can fix nitrogen in the soil for the plants to use, such as Rhizobium leguminosarum, which has a symbiosis with legumes.

Microorganisms that have a harmful effect on the ecosystem health would be those that cause diseases and harm other living beings, for example, viruses that affect plants, like the Tobacco mosaic virus, which infects plants from the Solanaceae family.