Xylan degradation: A glimpse at microbial diversity

Abstract

The key to taking the measure of biodiversity lies in a downward adjustment of scale...Most of the Earth's largest species - mammals, birds, and trees - have been seen and documented. But microwildernesses exist in a handful of soil or aqueous silt collected almost anywhere in the world...Bacteria, protistans, nematodes, mites and other minute creatures swarm all around us, an animate matrix that binds the Earth's surface.