Establishment of Japanese Society of Microbial Ecology and Recommendation to Become a Member It is thought that a large number of microbial species living in nature maintain the equilibrium of flow by mutually interacting with and influencing the other organism species and environment in a complex manner. By the way, it is believed that there is a very large number of microorganisms that we are not able to culture artificially in nature, and because of which, we are not able to recognize them and study their characteristics. Moreover, even in the case of known microorganisms, while we have been able to partially understand a large number of questions, such as in what form do they exist in nature, what kind of activities they do, how they are affected by nature and simultaneously how do they change the nature through the activities they do, and what kind of mutual influence do they have on other organism species; however, there is still a very large portion that is beyond our reach. Therefore, it is indispensable to shed light on various laws of nature, and solve various problems mentioned above for developing technologies for managing the nature using these laws. In other words, in the root of various problems faced by the world today, such as long time problem of environmental cleanup, problem of food production, problem of preventive medicine, problem of food processing and preservation, and problem of biotechnology; problems of various functions and characteristics of microorganisms in nature cut across as a common thread. For solving these kinds of problems, it is necessary to develop new theories according to the complexity of nature, have clear explanation from multiple aspects including both macroscopic and microscopic standpoints by researchers from several specialty areas, and establishing its unified general image. This will in true sense lead to the establishment of general biological image including nature. We are volunteers who got together to form “Microbial Ecology Research Group” over a decade back, and to provide a platform for enabling a wide range of exchange and discussion between not only researchers who are just directly related to microbial ecology research, but also researchers from various disciplines who are interested in such problems including researchers from related fields, we have been organizing yearly symposium and publishing its outcome. For further development of this field, when everyone had the common understanding that time has come to move from a research group to a society, in the plenary session of the symposium held in January 1984, we decided to form “Japanese Society of Microbial Ecology”, and after completing various preparations, it was kicked off by the board of trustees in June 1985. We would request all those who are interested to proactively become members and extend their support to this society.   September 30, 1985 First President of Japanese Society of Microbial Ecology Choseki Furusaka (From the executive summary of lecture delivered at 1st Conference of Japanese Society of Microbial Ecology)