Estimating and comparing the diversity of marine actinobacteria.

This paper reviews the application of species richness estimators to microbial diversity data and describes phylogenetic approaches to comparing microbial communities. The techniques are demonstrated using a community of marine actinobacteria. Results demonstrate that marine environments harbour massive actinobacterial diversity. Furthermore, these predictions are likely to be severe underestimates due to the use of arbitrary OTU definitions.