In the past decade, there was a growing interest in using functional trait approaches to study soil bacterial communities. However, microbial ecology as lagged behind plant and animal ecology in implementing such an approach. One of the main difficulties is linked to the absence of a small set of well identified bacterial functional traits, relevant for defining ecological strategies, explaining community assembly and predicting community impact on ecosystem functioning. Taking inspiration from plant functional ecology, we propose that functional traits should not be identified based on their relationship to an ecosystem function of interest, but rather on their relationship to bacterial fitness. We propose a framework in which bacterial fitness is composed of three components: growth rate, survival and dispersion. We identify putative functional traits linked to those components, in particular 16S rDNA copy number for growth rate. We propose several ways of validating identified functional traits by observing changes in community-aggregated trait values along environmental gradients, observing relationships between relative abundance and trait values within communities and comparing community and regional pool traits diversity. Finally, we argue for using traits to define bacterial ecological strategies and identify relationships between response and effect traits.

在过去的十年中，人们对使用功能性状方法研究土壤细菌群落越来越感兴趣。然而，微生物生态学在实施这种方法方面落后于植物和动物生态学。一个主要困难与缺乏一小组明确确定的细菌功能特征有关，这些特征与定义生态策略、解释群落组装和预测群落对生态系统功能的影响有关。从植物功能生态学中汲取灵感，我们建议不应根据其与感兴趣的生态系统功能的关系来确定功能性状，而应根据其与细菌适应性的关系来确定功能性状。我们提出了一个框架，其中细菌适合度由三个部分组成：增长率、存活率和分散度。我们确定了与这些组件相关的假定功能特征，特别是 16S rDNA 拷贝数的增长率。我们提出了几种验证已识别功能性状的方法，方法是观察社区聚集性状值沿环境梯度的变化，观察社区内相对丰度和性状值之间的关系，以及比较社区和区域性状的多样性。最后，我们主张使用性状来定义细菌生态策略并确定响应性状和效应性状之间的关系。观察社区内相对丰度和特征值之间的关系，并比较社区和区域池特征多样性。最后，我们主张使用性状来定义细菌生态策略并确定响应性状和效应性状之间的关系。观察社区内相对丰度和特征值之间的关系，并比较社区和区域池特征多样性。最后，我们主张使用性状来定义细菌生态策略并确定响应性状和效应性状之间的关系。