What Is Happening to Microbial Ecology?

Abstract

This is a time in which very important advances are occurring on many fronts to change the field of microbial ecology. These include new experimental ways to measure and identify organisms in natural samples, methods and approaches for modeling rate processes in complex systems, ways of combining the various kinetic processes into comprehensible approximate equations and graphical representations, computer applications for the simulation of overall processes, and statistical methods for the reduction and analysis of data. We now have increased ability to analyze the microbe’s real environment—the microenvironment. More important is the convergence of methodologies from the many and varied different field toward the multidisciplinary analysis of microbial ecology. Most importantly, although microbial ecology has been the invisible part of almost all ecosystems, it is crucial that ecologists come to recognize that more than half of any ecosystem is its microbial component.