Higher taxonomic ranks (phylum, class, order and family) have approximately the low specificity percentages, while for genera and especially species there is a clear increase in the amount of specific taxa. Nevertheless, the percentage of specific species does not even reach 20% for the most favourable PCI-32765 price case of environment supertypes (using 90% for the specificity criterion, Figure 1). Some of these species belong to well-known examples of specificity, such as

the marine bacteria Prochlorococcus marinus and Pelagibacter ubique. These taxa are thought to be amongst the most abundant microorganisms in the Earth [22], but at the same time they are specific from the pelagic marine environment: they are typical examples of specialists living on a widely extended habitat on the Earth. For these taxa, however, genetic differences that can be associated to niche differentiation have been reported, showing that specificity could be found on subspecific (ecotype) level [23]. The gastrointestinal tract of animals is, once more, the environment where more specific bacteria can be found. Figure 1 Quantification of specific and cosmopolitan taxa. Left side: percentage of specific taxa for the three levels of environmental classification. A particular taxa is defined as specific when a given percentage of its observations

belong to a single environment. That percentage is shown in the abscissa axis. Right CH5183284 solubility dmso side: percentage of cosmopolitan taxa for the three levels of environmental classification, in relation to the number of environments in which the taxa is present. It must also be remarked that for environmental subtypes, the most selleck products detailed level

of the environmental classification, specificity is GF120918 mouse almost inexistent at any taxonomic depth (Figure 1). The relatively low numbers of specific bacteria, even at the species level, indicate that, using this environmental classification, environment-specific clades of bacteria are not abundant and therefore clear-cut specialization is not a widely used strategy in prokaryotes. We can define a cosmopolitan taxa as having five or more observations in 90% of the environments (5 of 5 for supertypes, 18 of 20 for types and 41 of 46 for subtypes). While the upper taxonomic ranks can be considered as eurioic (tolerant to highly diverse conditions), that behaviour does not necessarily hold for their constituents. This trend can indeed be appreciated in Figure 1, where cosmopolitanism decreases greatly for the genus level and disappears almost completely for species. Again, the upper taxonomic levels (phylum, class and order) show a uniform behaviour, with high levels of cosmopolitanism (around 70% of the taxa for environmental supertypes, and 30% for subtypes).