Biofilms are a form of collective life with emergent properties that confer many advantages
on their inhabitants, and they represent a much higher level of organization than single cells …

The discovery of chemosynthetic ecosystems at deep-sea hydrothermal vents in 1977
changed our view of biology. Chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea form the foundation of …

Microbial life in marine sediment contributes substantially to global biomass and is a crucial
component of the Earth system. Subseafloor sediment includes both aerobic and anaerobic …

A recent paper by Martiny argues that “high proportions” of bacteria in diverse Earth
environments have been cultured. Here we reanalyze a portion of the data in that paper, and …

The majority of life on Earth—notably, microbial life—occurs in places that do not receive
sunlight, with the habitats of the oceans being the largest of these reservoirs. Sunlight …

The paradigm that only 1% of microbes are culturable has had a profound impact on our
understanding of microbial ecology and is still a major motivation for mostly using molecular …

Pyrosequencing-based 16S rRNA gene surveys are increasingly utilized to study highly
diverse bacterial communities, with special emphasis on utilizing the large number of …

Tropical reefs shelter one quarter to one third of all marine species but one third of the coral
species that construct reefs are now at risk of extinction. Because traditional methods for …

Several reports have highlighted that forest soil samples are more phylum‐rich than
agricultural soil samples. However, little is known about the structure and richness of the …

Microbes produce many compounds that are costly to a focal cell but promote the survival
and reproduction of neighboring cells. This observation has led to the suggestion that …