21
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Marine microbial diversity: can it be determined?

      1
      Trends in microbiology
      Elsevier BV

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Estimates of the order of magnitude for the total number of microbial species on Earth range from 10(3) to 10(9). Despite global dispersal of microorganisms, this number is probably rather large. The total biodiversity of an ecosystem is composed of two elements: first, a set of abundant taxa that carry out most ecosystem functions, grow actively and suffer intense losses through predation and viral lysis. These taxa are retrievable with molecular techniques but are difficult to grow in culture. Second, there is a seed bank of many rare taxa that are not growing or grow extremely slowly, do not experience viral lysis and predation is reduced. Such taxa are seldom retrieved by molecular techniques but many can be grown in culture, which explains the dictum 'everything is everywhere'.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Trends Microbiol
          Trends in microbiology
          Elsevier BV
          0966-842X
          0966-842X
          Jun 2006
          : 14
          : 6
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Institut de Ciències del Mar, CMIMA-CSIC, P. Marítim de la Barceloneta 37-42, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. cpedros@icm.csic.es
          Article
          S0966-842X(06)00098-9
          10.1016/j.tim.2006.04.007
          16679014
          2d7c338d-a432-4a48-9d18-9c0faefc9ef3
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article