Preface
The average citizen thinks of microbes as dangerous or at least as nasty enemies to her/his
health that she/he cannot see. The invisibility to the naked eye is the reason why microbes are
so poorly known, their wide action and importance in nature almost fully neglected. And this
also has the consequence that they play no or only a subordinate role in the international
conventions for the protection of species. The French born English writer Hilaire Belloc
(1870–1953) put this dilemma into a simple poem that starts: “The microbe is so very small,
you cannot make him out at all, but many sanguine people hope to see him through
the microscope . . .”. There is no doubt, that only a minority of people have the opportunity
to do so and thus the majority stays ignorant and continues to harbor only the negative image
of microbes.
This book about microbial ecology will open the ignorant eyes to understand and appreciate
the role and importance of the ubiquitous “invisible microbes” in nature as well as in daily life.
In the twenty-first century, with mankind facing new threats like contamination of soils, rivers,
the oceans, air pollution, global warming, climate change, desertification, newly evolving
diseases, etc., it is necessary – more than ever before – to assess the importance of microbes,
of their ecological behavior and implication in these processes. A prerequisite for that is a
multi-facetted knowledge of microbes, their diversity, their metabolism, their interactions,
the ecological rules controlling them and the biotopes they inhabit. Tools and methods for
the study of ecological interactions are as necessary as the physicochemical axioms and
mathematics behind them. Ecology is predominantly seen as an outdoor science, but has by
principle two quite different localities of research: Laboratory work is as important as the
study of the sometimes rather inaccessible natural habitats. It is essential for the modern
ecologist to be as competent and experienced in the field as at the lab bench.
The six editors of this book, Jean Claude Bertrand, Pierre Caumette, Philippe Lebaron,
Robert Matheron, Philippe Normand and Te ´lesphore Sime-Ngando are to be congratulated for
finding such a perfect list of authorial teams, all very well known experts in the field. The book
is divided in five parts: “general chapters”, “taxonomy and evolution”, “microbial habitats”,
“role and functioning of microbial ecosystems”, and “tools and microbial genetics applied to
the environment”, each containing 3–5 chapters, altogether written by 59 authors, of whom
many were involved in more than one chapter. Thirteen chapters are co-authored by one or
more of the editors! Thus and by means of multiple authorship the editors made sure that the
book comes out as a single consistent effort, not a collection of more or less divergent
chapters. As a comprehensive treatise it definitely has a chance to become at least an important
reference and textbook for graduate and postgraduate students in microbial ecology, but most
probably in general microbiology, too. Textbooks in general microbiology (with exceptions)
usually put emphasis on metabolism, systematics, structure etc., not on ecology. This book,
however, positions ecology at the center and the other fields around it. Quite often one misses
the microbial eukaryotes or viruses in microbial ecology books. Not in this one. This is an all
microbes embracing effort and therefore constitutes a complete treatise of the field. What is
welcomed and emphasizes the completeness of the book is that it devotes one chapter to the
history of microbial ecology, depicting the development of theories, increase of knowledge,
changes in thinking over the centuries towards more modern and global views. In other
v
The average citizen thinks of microbes as dangerous or at least as nasty enemies to her/his
health that she/he cannot see. The invisibility to the naked eye is the reason why microbes are
so poorly known, their wide action and importance in nature almost fully neglected. And this
also has the consequence that they play no or only a subordinate role in the international
conventions for the protection of species. The French born English writer Hilaire Belloc
(1870–1953) put this dilemma into a simple poem that starts: “The microbe is so very small,
you cannot make him out at all, but many sanguine people hope to see him through
the microscope . . .”. There is no doubt, that only a minority of people have the opportunity
to do so and thus the majority stays ignorant and continues to harbor only the negative image
of microbes.
This book about microbial ecology will open the ignorant eyes to understand and appreciate
the role and importance of the ubiquitous “invisible microbes” in nature as well as in daily life.
In the twenty-first century, with mankind facing new threats like contamination of soils, rivers,
the oceans, air pollution, global warming, climate change, desertification, newly evolving
diseases, etc., it is necessary – more than ever before – to assess the importance of microbes,
of their ecological behavior and implication in these processes. A prerequisite for that is a
multi-facetted knowledge of microbes, their diversity, their metabolism, their interactions,
the ecological rules controlling them and the biotopes they inhabit. Tools and methods for
the study of ecological interactions are as necessary as the physicochemical axioms and
mathematics behind them. Ecology is predominantly seen as an outdoor science, but has by
principle two quite different localities of research: Laboratory work is as important as the
study of the sometimes rather inaccessible natural habitats. It is essential for the modern
ecologist to be as competent and experienced in the field as at the lab bench.
The six editors of this book, Jean Claude Bertrand, Pierre Caumette, Philippe Lebaron,
Robert Matheron, Philippe Normand and Te ´lesphore Sime-Ngando are to be congratulated for
finding such a perfect list of authorial teams, all very well known experts in the field. The book
is divided in five parts: “general chapters”, “taxonomy and evolution”, “microbial habitats”,
“role and functioning of microbial ecosystems”, and “tools and microbial genetics applied to
the environment”, each containing 3–5 chapters, altogether written by 59 authors, of whom
many were involved in more than one chapter. Thirteen chapters are co-authored by one or
more of the editors! Thus and by means of multiple authorship the editors made sure that the
book comes out as a single consistent effort, not a collection of more or less divergent
chapters. As a comprehensive treatise it definitely has a chance to become at least an important
reference and textbook for graduate and postgraduate students in microbial ecology, but most
probably in general microbiology, too. Textbooks in general microbiology (with exceptions)
usually put emphasis on metabolism, systematics, structure etc., not on ecology. This book,
however, positions ecology at the center and the other fields around it. Quite often one misses
the microbial eukaryotes or viruses in microbial ecology books. Not in this one. This is an all
microbes embracing effort and therefore constitutes a complete treatise of the field. What is
welcomed and emphasizes the completeness of the book is that it devotes one chapter to the
history of microbial ecology, depicting the development of theories, increase of knowledge,
changes in thinking over the centuries towards more modern and global views. In other
v