Influence of Soil Mineral Colloids on Metabolic Processes, Growth, Adhesion, and Ecology of Microbes and Viruses

Soil is undoubtedly the most complex of all microbial habitats and there is insufficient information on how and where most microbial events occur in soil in situ and which microbes are the major and, physiologically, the most important participants in these events.

Abstract

This chapter reviews what is and what is not known about the effects of clay minerals on microbes and viruses in soil, the mechanisms involved, and the importance of clay minerals to microbial events and to the survival of viruses in soil. It then illuminates the mystiques, exposes the unsupported assumptions, undermines established error, and indicates directions for future realistic and productive research. The chapter defines the indirect effects as those effects of clays that modify the environment in which the microbes and viruses are residing. Direct effects are defined as those effects that involve a surface interaction between clays and microbes and viruses. Although the adsorption and binding of organic compounds on clay minerals are, by this definition, indirect effects, they are discussed primarily under direct effects, as the mechanisms involved in the adsorption and binding of organics may be similar to those involved in surface interactions between clays and microbes and viruses.