The dust collecting around a home could reveal the genders of the people who live there as well as whether or not they have pets.
Household dust contains a staggering amount of bacteria and fungi, and a new study demonstrated how these microbial profiles tell a detailed story, the University of Colorado Boulder reported.
"Every day, we're surrounded by a vast array of organisms in our homes, most of which we can't see," said Noah Fierer, an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at CU-Boulder and a co-author of the study. "We live in a microbial zoo, and this study was an attempt to catalog that diversity."
To make their findings, a team of researchers analyzed dust from about 1,200 homes across the continental U.S. that were participants of the Wild Life of Our Homes citizen science project. The average home contains about 5,000 different species of bacteria and around 2,000 species of fungi, but the researchers noted these microbes are rarely harmful.
"Geography is the best predictor of fungi in your home," Fierer said. "The reason is that most fungi blow in from outdoors via soil and leaves."
While fungi can reveal geographic location, bacteria are better indicators of who lives in a given household. The researchers found they could use bacteria in household dust samples to effectively determine which homes had pets, as well as the gender ratio of those living there.
"One of the key takeaways is that if you want to change what you breathe inside your house, you would either have to move very far away or change the people and the pets you live with," said Albert Barbarán, a graduate researcher in CU-Boulder's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and lead author of the study.
The findings could be used to aid in forensic investigations and allergen research.
The study was published in a recent edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
