Emily Kunselman, Vanessa Minnis, Sho Kodera, Mary M Buschmann, Adam Jones, Alexander Dehgan, Amber Hartman Scholz, Antje Boetius, Axel Hochkirch, Chris Dupont, Chris Walzer, Colin Averill, Drew Endy, Fabrice Stephenson, Fengping Wang, Gregory Mueller, Janet K Jansson, Jon Paul Rodríguez, Karsten Zengler, Kent H Redford, Louis-Patrick Haraoui, Maria Gloria Dominguez Bello, Miguel Lurgi, Nadine Lamberski, Neil Cox, Raquel Peixoto, Rob Knight, Robert Friedman, Ryan Phelan, Sean M Gibbons, Suzanne Lynn Ishaq, Thomas Brooks, Valeria Souza, Jack Gilbert, Sarah Michelle Allard
In May 2025, the "Conservation in a Microbial World" conference was hosted at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography to address the lack of microbial representation in international conservation frameworks (i.e. International Union for Conservation of Nature-IUCN). Organized by Drs. Redford, Gilbert, Friedman, and Rodríguez, the meeting explored the importance of the microbial world in conservation and what can be done to include microbes in global conservation. The meeting gathered together experts in fungi, bacteria, and viruses with backgrounds in climate science, genomics, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and human health, spanning research, industry, conservation, and policy. Key themes included: how to communicate the importance of microbes, how to conserve microbes themselves, and how microbes could be integrated into existing conservation. The primary outcome was the launch of the IUCN Species Survival Commission-Microbial Conservation Specialist Group. This initiative marks a pivotal step toward incorporating microbial life into global biodiversity conservation policy and practice.