Roberts delivered his lecture titled “Why I love bacteria,” describing not only why bacteria are important to sustain human life but also how they are so aesthetically pleasant.
The several hundred trillion microscopic individuals helping to keep each of us alive and healthy, Roberts said, only scratches the surface of the extreme biodiversity encapsulated in the planet’s entire bacterial population.
In fact, he noted that if you added up all the planet’s bacteria, the total would significantly outweigh the organisms we can actually see.