Ecological and Evolutionary Science
Editor's Pick Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceProposal of a Taxonomic Nomenclature for the Bacillus cereus Group Which Reconciles Genomic Definitions of Bacterial Species with Clinical and Industrial PhenotypesHistorical species definitions for many prokaryotes, including pathogens, have relied on phenotypic characteristics that are inconsistent with genome evolution. This scenario forces microbiologists and clinicians to face a tradeoff between taxonomic rigor and clinical interpretability. Using the Bacillus cereus group as a model, a conceptual framework for the...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary SciencePlasmids Shaped the Recent Emergence of the Major Nosocomial Pathogen Enterococcus faeciumEnterococcus faecium is one of the most frequent nosocomial pathogens of hospital-acquired infections. E. faecium has gained resistance against most commonly available antibiotics, most notably, against ampicillin, gentamicin, and vancomycin, which renders infections difficult to treat. Many...
Observation | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceGliotoxin, a Known Virulence Factor in the Major Human Pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus, Is Also Biosynthesized by Its Nonpathogenic Relative Aspergillus fischeriAspergillus fumigatus is a major opportunistic fungal pathogen of humans, but most of its close relatives are nonpathogenic. Why is that so? This important, yet largely unanswered, question can be addressed by examining how A. fumigatus and its close nonpathogenic relatives are similar or different...
Commentary | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceMicrobial Life Deep UnderfootSoil is one of the most diverse microbial habitats on Earth. While the distribution and abundance of microbial taxa in surface soils have been well described, the phylogenetic and functional diversity of bacteria and archaea in deep-soil strata remains unexplored.
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceEffects of Spatial Variability and Relic DNA Removal on the Detection of Temporal Dynamics in Soil Microbial CommunitiesNearly all microbial communities are dynamic in time. Understanding how temporal dynamics in microbial community structure affect soil biogeochemistry and fertility are key to being able to predict the responses of the soil microbiome to environmental perturbations. Here, we explain the effects of soil spatial structure and relic DNA on the determination of microbial community fluctuations over time. We found that intensive spatial...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceCarbon Use Efficiency and Its Temperature Sensitivity Covary in Soil BacteriaSoil microbes respond to environmental change by altering how they allocate carbon to growth versus respiration—or carbon use efficiency (CUE). Ecosystem and Earth System models, used to project how global soil C stocks will continue to respond to the climate crisis, often assume that microbes respond homogeneously to changes in the environment. In this study, we quantified how CUE varies with changes in temperature and substrate...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceA New Family of DNA Viruses Causing Disease in Crustaceans from Diverse Aquatic BiomesRecent genomic and metagenomic studies have led to a dramatic expansion of the known diversity of nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) of eukaryotes, which include giant viruses of protists and important pathogens of vertebrates, such as poxviruses. However, the characterization of viruses from nonmodel hosts still lags behind. We sequenced the complete genomes of three viruses infecting crustaceans, the Caribbean spiny lobster...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceA Genus Definition for Bacteria and Archaea Based on a Standard Genome Relatedness IndexIn recent decades, the taxonomy of Bacteria and Archaea, and therefore genus designation, has been largely based on the use of a single ribosomal gene, the 16S rRNA gene, as a taxonomic marker. We propose an approach to delineate genera that excludes the direct use of the 16S rRNA gene and focuses on a standard genome relatedness index, the average nucleotide identity. Our findings are of importance to the microbiology...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceCollective Viral Spread Mediated by Virion Aggregates Promotes the Evolution of Defective Interfering ParticlesRecent insights have revealed that viruses use a highly diverse set of strategies to release multiple viral genomes into the same target cells, allowing the emergence of beneficial, but also detrimental, interactions among viruses inside infected cells. This has prompted interest among microbial ecologists and evolutionary biologists in studying how collective dispersal impacts the outcome of viral infections. Here, we have used...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceComparative Analyses of Vertebrate Gut Microbiomes Reveal Convergence between Birds and BatsIn this comprehensive survey of microbiomes of >900 species, including 315 mammals and 491 birds, we find a striking convergence of the microbiomes of birds and animals that fly. In nonflying mammals, diet and short-term evolutionary relatedness drive the microbiome, and many microbial species are specific to a particular kind of mammal, but flying mammals and birds break this pattern with many microbes shared across different...