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Article Dans Une Revue Hydrobiologia Année : 2011

Editorial: 'Disregarded' microbial diversity and ecological potentials in aquatic systems: a new paradigm shift ahead

Résumé

The introduction of molecular methods to the study of prokaryotes in the mid-1980s (Pace et al., 1986), and their expansion to small eukaryotes in the early 2000s (Lopez-Garcia et al., 2001; Moon-van der Staay et al., 2001) have allowed investigation of uncultured microbes in natural environments, and have greatly increased our knowledge of microbial biodiversity. The resulting major methodological, conceptual and empirical advances in aquatic microbial ecology are arguably the greatest advances in environmental sciences. Recent developments in sequencing technology and the use of SSU rRNA hypervariable tag sequencing are beginning to reveal the huge dimension of the microbial diversity hidden in natural aquatic ecosystems (Sogin et al., 2006; Huse et al., 2008). A very large number of microbial species may be represented by only one single cell among an assemblage of over a million cells present in 1 ml of water. This is because (i) aquatic systems are the largest on the Earth, (ii) microbial extinction is unlikely, (iii) sexuality is not a limiting factor, (iv) microbes live in all types of environments, including the most extreme conditions and (v) the number of microbial ''species'' ranges from millions to hundreds of millions. This corroborates with the Baas- Becking hypothesis on prokaryote and protist biogeography (i.e. 'everything is everywhere, but, the environment selects'), meaning that while the whole of microbial life is distributed worldwide, in a target environment the majority of species are only latently present (cf. de Wit&Bouvier, 2006). Hence, on a small spatial scale, most microbial biodiversity is hidden for our observation, because most species are cryptic or will occur at densities below our limit of detection........

Dates et versions

hal-00825304 , version 1 (23-05-2013)

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Télesphore Sime-Ngando, Nathalie Niquil. Editorial: 'Disregarded' microbial diversity and ecological potentials in aquatic systems: a new paradigm shift ahead. Hydrobiologia, 2011, 659, pp.1-4. ⟨10.1007/s10750-010-0511-5⟩. ⟨hal-00825304⟩
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