BACKGROUND Microbial communities—microbiomes—are intricately linked to human
health and critical ecosystem services. New technologies allow the rapid characterization of …

Recently, microbiologists have established the existence of biogeographic patterns among a
wide range of microorganisms. The focus of the field is now shifting to identifying the …

A major unresolved question in microbiome research is whether the complex taxonomic
architectures observed in surveys of natural communities can be explained and predicted by …

Understanding the processes that are driving variation of natural microbial communities
across space or time is a major challenge for ecologists. Environmental conditions strongly …

The marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus is the smallest and most abundant
photosynthetic organism on Earth. In this Review, we summarize our understanding of the …

Increasing evidence has emerged for non-random spatial distributions of microbes, but
knowledge of the processes that cause variation in microbial assemblage among …

The factors driving β-diversity (variation in community composition) yield insights into the
maintenance of biodiversity on the planet. Here we tested whether the mechanisms that …

Recent discussion focuses on the best method for delineating microbial taxa, based on
either exact sequence variants (ESVs) or traditional operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of …

Horizontal genetic transfer (HGT) has played an important role in bacterial evolution at least
since the origins of the bacterial divisions, and HGT still facilitates the origins of bacterial …

Background Marine microbial communities have been essential contributors to global
biomass, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity since the early history of Earth, but so far their …