Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
3-4-2016
Journal
ISME Journal
DOI
10.1038/ismej.2016.28
Abstract
Phylogeny is an ecologically meaningful way to classify plants and animals, as closely related taxa frequently have similar ecological characteristics, functional traits and effects on ecosystem processes. For bacteria, however, phylogeny has been argued to be an unreliable indicator of an organism's ecology owing to evolutionary processes more common to microbes such as gene loss and lateral gene transfer, as well as convergent evolution. Here we use advanced stable isotope probing with (13)C and (18)O to show that evolutionary history has ecological significance for in situ bacterial activity. Phylogenetic organization in the activity of bacteria sets the stage for characterizing the functional attributes of bacterial taxonomic groups. Connecting identity with function in this way will allow scientists to begin building a mechanistic understanding of how bacterial community composition regulates critical ecosystem functions.The ISME Journal advance online publication, 4 March 2016; doi:10.1038/ismej.2016.28.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
APA Citation
Morrissey, E., Mau, R., Schwartz, E., Caporaso, J., Dijkstra, P., van Gestel, N., Koch, B., Liu, C. M., Hayer, M., McHugh, T., Marks, J., Price, L. B., & Hungate, B. (2016). Phylogenetic organization of bacterial activity.. ISME Journal, (). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.28
Peer Reviewed
1
Open Access
1
Included in
Bacteriology Commons, Environmental Public Health Commons, Occupational Health and Industrial Hygiene Commons
Comments
Reproduced with permission of Nature Publishing Group. ISME Journal.