ABSTRACT

Our ability to describe the highly diverse pool of low abundance populations present in natural microbial communities is increasing at an unprecedented pace. Yet we currently lack an integrative view of the key taxa, functions and metabolic activity which make-up this communal pool, usually referred to as the ‘rare biosphere’, across the domains of life. In this context, this review examines the microbial rare biosphere in its broader sense, providing an historical perspective on representative studies which enabled to bridge the concept from macroecology to microbial ecology. It then addresses our current knowledge of the prokaryotic rare biosphere, and covers emerging insights into the ecology, taxonomy and evolution of low abundance microeukaryotic, viral and host-associated communities. We also review recent methodological advances and provide a synthetic overview on how the rare biosphere fits into different conceptual models used to explain microbial community assembly mechanisms, composition and function.

中文翻译：

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微生物稀有生物圈：当前的概念，方法和生态学原理

摘要

我们描述自然微生物群落中低丰度种群高度多样性的能力正在以前所未有的速度增长。然而，我们目前对关键分类单元，功能和代谢活动缺乏完整的认识，而关键分类单元，功能和代谢活动构成了整个生命领域中这个公共资源库，通常被称为“稀有生物圈”。在此背景下，本综述从广义上考察了微生物稀有生物圈，为代表性研究提供了历史视角，这些研究使这一概念从宏观生态学到微生物生态学成为了桥梁。然后，它介绍了我们对原核生物稀有生物圈的当前知识，并涵盖了对低丰度微真核生物，病毒和寄主相关社区的生态学，分类学和进化的新兴见解。