Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It includes the study of symbioses, biogeochemical cycles and the interaction of microbes with anthropogenic effects such as pollution and climate change. The microbial world represents the largest reservoir of biodiversity that also is fundamental to sustaining key ecosystem processes, including the terrestrial carbon and nutrient cycles and the maintenance of plant fertility, across the breadth of the Earth’s ecosystems. In order to understand the role of microbial communities in ecosystem processes and to solve the major problems associated with human impact on the environment, a comprehensive and fundamental knowledge of microbial ecology is essential. The focus of the microbial ecology is to understand the ecology, diversity and functions of microorganisms in natural and engineered ecosystems. Without microbes in the environment, life on Earth may have never come into existence, and certainly not as we know it today. Microbes are responsible for cycling nutrients through the environment, creating important symbiotic relationships, providing energy in the absence of sunlight, and digesting the food we eat. Microbes are essential to the biogeochemical cycles which permit sustainable life on Earth. In the carbon cycle, microbial life decomposes dead organisms to release the carbon stored within their bodies, returning it to the soil. Microscopic bacteria play an essential role in the nitrogen cycle, transforming nitrogen to various forms through nitrogen fixation, nitrification, ammonification, and denitrification.
Molecular techniques for analysis of microbial ecology and characterization have taken over conventional analytical tools, which were laborious and time consuming. These new approaches provide better insight into the complex interactions taking place within indigenous microbiota of various environments, a few of which include: host and host-pathogens, plants and soil microbiota, aquatic microbes with surrounding water. With the advent of Next-Generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, it has become even faster and more economical to comprehensively evaluate the complexity of microbiota in an environment. This review focuses on these molecular approaches for understanding complex microbial communities and their implications. Current trends in understanding complex microbial communities are focused on molecular approaches that not only provide unbiased, comprehensive information but are also less labour intensive and can be accomplished in a shorter duration of time. There are several molecular approaches that were developed for classification of complex microbial communities and provide a clearer understanding of the microbe's ecology and interactions when compared to conventional culturing methods. The various subfields of the area along with technological progress that have future implications are glanced at in it. It will provide comprehensive knowledge to the readers. This book aims to serve as a resource guide for students and facilitate the study of the discipline.
Linsey Collado received her Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology from Public Science University, Wellington. She is actively committed to the researches focused on microscopic organisms, virology and parasitology. Collado has authored and edited a number of academic periodicals, articles and books in the field of bacteriology. She is serving as a Visiting Professor at several universities across Europe. She is an active member of several scientific and biological societies, where she shares her expertise and knowledge in the field of development biology, population genetics and molecular cloning.
