Tracking bacterial responses to global warming with an ecotype-based systematics.

The broadly defined species of bacterial systematics frequently contain unnamed and unrecognized populations (ecotypes) differing in physiology, genome content, and ecology. Without formal recognition of such ecotypes, it is difficult for microbial ecologists to detect replacement of one ecotype by another in the face of global warming. The ecotype simulation algorithm has proved capable of supporting investigation of such replacements, as it has detected temperature-distinguished ecotypes that are invisible to the present bacterial systematics. Creating an ecotype-based systematics will help to identify the units of diversity that we will want to track as we seek to observe the early microbial responses to global warming.