BIOS E-127 – 08.10. Microbial species, biogeography & population genetics
Dec 19, 2015
Species
“Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups” (Mayr, 1942)
Microbial species
“…a category that circumscribes a (preferably) genomically coherent group of individual isolates/strains sharing a high degree of similarity in (many) independent features, comparatively tested under highly standardized conditions” (Stackebrandt et al., 2002)
“…characterized by a certain degree of phenotypic consistency, showing 70% of DNA-DNA binding and over 97% of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene-sequence identity” (Vandamme et al., 1996)