Question

What is the traditional definition of a species and why is it difficult to describe a species in microbiological terms? What is a OTU and how does it relate to the traditional concept of taxa and taxonomy? What is a niche and how the fundamental niche of an organism is different from its realized niche. Xu et al. (2015) described the diversity of the oral cavity.

Answer 1

Answer .Ernst Mayr proposed the species concept that two individual if mated are able to produce fertile offspring then they belong to same species.

But in case of bacteria they produce by asexually and they exchange their genetic material in many aspects so it hard to define that which bacteria is from which species.

OTU (operational taxonomic unit) that used for classifying groups of closely related individual.it is related to traditional concept of taxa and taxonomy as it include the basic of hierarchial character that which classify individual

Niche is defined as functional position of an organism in an environment.

Fundamental niche is defined as population live in set of condition where it survive and reproduce.

While in realized niche represent when population under the condition when it live or interaction with other animal take into account.

There are around 700 Prokaryotic species live in oral cavity that made up 150 genera.