Applied Microbial Systematics

Microbial systematics has enjoyed two major advances in the latter half of this century: the introductions of numerical phenetics and molecular techniques for direct comparisons of organismal genomes. Numerical phenetics (taxonomy)was very influential during the 1960s and 70s in providing the first objective approach to bacterial classification. Numerical taxonomy gave microbiologists the solid theoretical base for classification and identification that had been sought for so long. Indeed, the concepts and procedures are still used for routine identification in the applied microbiology laboratory in the form of kits and automated identification machines. Although numerical phenetics no longer ranks as the primary method of microbial classification, the theoretical base and need for phenotypic descriptions of new taxa will continue to make the approach important for many years.