Surprising - In Bacterial Diversity, Amazon is a 'Desert'; Desert is an 'Amazon’

The first ever-continental scale genetic survey of soil bacteria has come up with surprising results. The diversity of soil bacteria in the otherwise species-rich Amazon is a more like a desert, while the arid desert is teeming with bacteria. The reason for this is the fact that the primary factor that seems to govern the diversity of soil bacteria is soil pH. Thus, the acidic soils of topical forests harbour fewer bacterial species than the neutral soils of deserts. The reserchers are Noah Fierer from the University of Colorado, and Robert Jackson from the Duke University. According to the researchers "The number of bacterial species in a spoonful of soil is likely to exceed the total number of plant species in all of the United States.". The findings appear in the Early Online Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.