A species concept for bacteria based on adaptive divergence

TY - JOUR

T1 - A species concept for bacteria based on adaptive divergence

AU - Vos, M.

N1 - Reporting year: 2011 Metis note: 5013; WAG; ME

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - Bacterial strains are currently grouped into species based on overall genomic similarity and sharing of phenotypes deemed ecologically important. Many believe this polyphasic taxonomy is in need of revision because it lacks grounding in evolutionary theory, and boundaries between species are arbitrary. Recent taxonomy efforts using multilocus sequence typing (MLST) data are based on the identification of distinct phylogenetic clusters. However, these approaches face the problem of deciding the phylogenetic level at which clusters are representative of evolutionary or taxonomically distinct units. In this review, I propose classifying two phylogenetic clusters as separate species only when they have statistically significantly diverged as a result of adaptive evolution. More than a method for classification, the concept of adaptive divergence can be used in a ‘reverse ecology’ approach to identify lineages that are in the process of speciation or genes involved in initial adaptive divergence.

AB - Bacterial strains are currently grouped into species based on overall genomic similarity and sharing of phenotypes deemed ecologically important. Many believe this polyphasic taxonomy is in need of revision because it lacks grounding in evolutionary theory, and boundaries between species are arbitrary. Recent taxonomy efforts using multilocus sequence typing (MLST) data are based on the identification of distinct phylogenetic clusters. However, these approaches face the problem of deciding the phylogenetic level at which clusters are representative of evolutionary or taxonomically distinct units. In this review, I propose classifying two phylogenetic clusters as separate species only when they have statistically significantly diverged as a result of adaptive evolution. More than a method for classification, the concept of adaptive divergence can be used in a ‘reverse ecology’ approach to identify lineages that are in the process of speciation or genes involved in initial adaptive divergence.

U2 - 10.1016/j.tim.2010.10.003

DO - 10.1016/j.tim.2010.10.003

M3 - Article

SN - 0966-842X

VL - 19

SP - 1

EP - 7

JO - Trends in Microbiology

JF - Trends in Microbiology

IS - 1

ER -