Community similarity declines with increasing geographic distance if species tend to be
locally adapted or if they are dispersal limited. The distance–decay of similarity has been …

Bacterial systematists face unique challenges when trying to identify ecologically meaningful
units of biological diversity. Whereas plant and animal systematists are guided by a theory …

The number of species of Bacteria and Archaea (ca 5000) is surprisingly small considering
their early evolution, genetic diversity and residence in all ecosystems. The bacterial species …

Factors governing large-scale spatio-temporal distribution of microorganisms remain
unresolved, yet are pivotal to understanding ecosystem value and function. Molecular …

The identification of geographical patterns in microbial distributions has begun to challenge
purely ecological explanations of biogeography and the underlying principle of “everything …

Perennially cold habitats are diminishing as a result of climate change; however, little is
known of the diversity or biogeography of microbes that thrive in such environments. Here …

The pace of pathogen discovery is rapidly accelerating. This reflects not only factors that
enable the appearance and globalization of new microbial infections, but also improvements …

The notion that all prokaryotes belong to genomically and phenomically cohesive clusters
that we might legitimately call “species” is a contentious one. At issue are (1) whether such …

The characterization of functional elements in genomes relies on the identification of the
footprints of natural selection. In this quest, taking into account neutral evolutionary …

Variation in gene content has been hypothesized to be the primary mode of adaptive
evolution in microorganisms; however, very little is known about the spatial and temporal …