Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Microbial Growth Measurement: Indirect Methods

Microbial Growth Measurement: Indirect Methods

Estimating microbial growth is essential for understanding population dynamics and environmental adaptations. Indirect methods provide valuable insights by measuring parameters such as turbidity, metabolic activity, and biomass, enabling efficient and reproducible assessments.During exponential growth, microbial cells scatter light proportionally to their biomass, a principle used in turbidity measurements. About one million cells per milliliter produce detectable scattering, which a...

Marine Microbial Ecology

Marine Microbial Ecology

Marine microbial ecosystems are shaped by distinct physicochemical limits, including high salinity, low nutrient availability, and fluctuating oxygen levels. These conditions favor smaller microbial cell sizes, which maximize their surface-to-volume ratio for efficient nutrient uptake.Microbial activity and community composition are closely linked to biogeochemical cycles, particularly in dynamic environments like estuaries, where halotolerant microbes thrive in response to variable salinity...

Methods to Assess Microbial Communities

Methods to Assess Microbial Communities

Microbial communities, comprising bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotic microorganisms, inhabit diverse ecosystems and play crucial roles in environmental and biological processes. Their diversity is defined by three main parameters: species richness (the number of distinct species), species abundance (the relative quantity of each species), and species evenness (how uniformly individual species are distributed in various locations). These factors together shape the structure and ecological balance...

Deep Sea Microbial Ecology

Deep Sea Microbial Ecology

The deep ocean and its underlying sediments represent vast, largely unexplored microbial habitats that extend far beyond the sunlit photic zone. The photic (euphotic) zone typically spans the upper ~100–200 meters of pelagic waters in the open ocean, but its depth varies geographically and seasonally, where sufficient light supports photosynthetic life. Below this lies the deep sea, spanning roughly 1000–6000 meters (bathypelagic to abyssal zones), with deeper hadal trenches...

Population Growth

Population Growth

Population size is dynamic, increasing with birth rates and immigration, and decreasing with death rates and emigration. In ideal conditions with unlimited resources, populations can increase exponentially, which plots as a J-shaped growth rate curve of population size against time. This type of curve is characteristic of newly-introduced invasive species, or populations that have suffered catastrophic declines and are rebounding.

Methods to Assess Microbial Populations

Methods to Assess Microbial Populations

Assessing microbial populations is crucial for understanding microbial roles in health, ecology, and industry. Various complementary techniques—both culture-based and molecular—enable detailed analysis of microbial abundance, diversity, and function.Viable Plate CountThe viable plate count is a traditional culture-based method used to estimate the number of living microbes in a sample. After serial dilution, the sample is spread onto nutrient agar plates. Each viable cell forms a...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Transforming the American Academy of Microbiology for social good through scientific portfolios.

mBio·2026

Same author

Metabolic inequality in microbial communities.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026

Same author

Phage infection fronts trigger early sporulation and viral entrapment in bacterial populations.

The ISME journal·2026

Same author

Evolutionary bioenergetics of sporulation.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same author

Safeguarding microbial biodiversity: microbial conservation specialist group within the species survival commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

mSystems·2025

Same author

Safeguarding microbial biodiversity: microbial conservation specialist group within the species survival commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

FEMS microbiology ecology·2025

Same journal

Chemotactic self-organization captures the dynamics of mammalian hair follicle patterning.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same journal

Tomographic imaging of superconducting order using particle-hole interference.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same journal

Inhibitory potential of autologous neutralizing antibodies sets quantitative limits on the rebound-competent HIV-1 reservoir.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same journal

Inferring epidemiological parameters under an infectious phylogeography model with visitor dynamics.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same journal

Analytical modeling for suction cup designs for skin-interfaced wearable devices.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same journal

Improving cell-free metabolism through direct integration of artificial respiratory chains.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 21, 2026

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology

Published on: November 5, 2014

Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity.

Kenneth J Locey¹, Jay T Lennon¹

¹Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 ken@weecology.org lennonj@indiana.edu.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|May 4, 2016

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Biodiversity scaling laws apply to microbes, plants, and animals, revealing universal patterns in species abundance. This research predicts over a trillion microbial species on Earth, demonstrating predictable microbial biodiversity across all scales.

Keywords:

biodiversity macroecology microbiology microbiome rare biosphere

More Related Videos

Characterizing Microbiome Dynamics – Flow Cytometry Based Workflows from Pure Cultures to Natural Communities

Characterizing Microbiome Dynamics – Flow Cytometry Based Workflows from Pure Cultures to Natural Communities

Published on: July 12, 2018

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Published on: July 30, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Mar 21, 2026

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology

Published on: November 5, 2014

Characterizing Microbiome Dynamics – Flow Cytometry Based Workflows from Pure Cultures to Natural Communities

Characterizing Microbiome Dynamics – Flow Cytometry Based Workflows from Pure Cultures to Natural Communities

Published on: July 12, 2018

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Published on: July 30, 2019

Area of Science:

Ecology
Microbiology
Biodiversity Science

Background:

Scaling laws are fundamental to biodiversity theory but are often untested for microorganisms.
Existing scaling laws for plants and animals may not apply to evolutionarily distant microbial life.
Understanding microbial biodiversity is crucial due to their diverse metabolisms and abundance scales.

Purpose of the Study:

To test the universality of biodiversity scaling laws across microorganisms, plants, and animals.
To investigate if scaling laws hold for all domains of life, encompassing diverse metabolisms and abundances.
To predict the total number of microbial species on Earth.

Main Methods:

Utilized a global dataset of approximately 35,000 sites and 5.6 million species.
Incorporated extensive high-throughput molecular data for microorganisms and community data for plants and animals.
Applied statistical analysis to identify and validate universal dominance scaling laws.

Main Results:

Demonstrated similar scaling rates for common and rare species across microorganisms, plants, and animals.
Documented a universal dominance scaling law effective across 30 orders of magnitude.
This law accurately predicts the abundance of dominant marine bacteria.

Conclusions:

Biodiversity scaling laws are universal, applying consistently from microbes to macroscopic organisms.
The identified scaling law, combined with the lognormal biodiversity model, predicts approximately 1 trillion microbial species.
Microbial biodiversity is vast yet predictable across all scales, from the smallest to the largest microbiomes.