This is an article about bacteria found to be following the species area relationship. The article discusses about the nature of bacteria, being the most common organism on earth. They can be found almost everywhere in nature. In bacteria identification, there are an estimated 100 billion kinds of bacteria. Melissa Lage and Jennifer Hughes, along with their Stanford University and the University of Washington colleagues, found that bacteria follow what ecologists call the species area relationship. This species area relationship is the logical notion that the number of species in an area increases as the size of the area increases. Their work was published in the December 9 issue of Nature. It is the first to show that this basic law of nature holds true for bacteria.

According to the article, Lage believes that bacteria respond to their environment. She further explains that if there are changes in the environment, there may be changes in the kinds of bacteria we see. Bacteria have critical roles in the global ecosystem. Bacteria purify water, pump oxygen into the air, and decompose dead plants and animals. The article explains that due to bacteria identification, different bacteria may perform these functions differently, depending on the place. Huges further adds that if the environment changes, the bacteria change too.
Lage and Hughes conducted their experiment in a half-acre of salt marsh on Prudence Island. They used a measured grid and took twenty six one gram samples of soil. Lage used a kit to extract DNA from each sample. A machine then amplified only bacteria from DNA, which was cloned and cultured in E. coli. Lage then randomly tested each of the twenty six plates and counted the different types, using their unique gene sequences.
The findings of the study and bacteria identification revealed that bacterial communities were very similar a couple of centimeters apart, but more different hundreds of meters apart. The study showed that bacteria are not randomly distributed, but they follow the same ordered pattern of distribution as plants and animals.Read article