Techniques in Microbial Ecology

Rating:
Summary: Extensive and comprehensible!
Review: The book 'Techniques in Microbial Ecology'edited by R.S.Burlage et.al. consists of two parts. The first part describes microorganisms of different physiological groups such as nitrifiers, sulfur-oxidizers, methanotrophs, methylotrophs etc. In addition each chapter gives information about identification, cultivation and media. Not only bacteria are described, there are also chapters about fungal communities, protozoa and bacteriophages. The second part deals with environmental techniques generally applicable to environmental research. These techniques comprise sampling, enumeration, lipid analysis, isolation of nucleic acids and molecular techniques. Special topics are discussed in the third part of this book. These topics are biofilms, bioremediation, statistics, numerical classification, all important issues in environmental microbiology. Each chapter is written by a well-recognized microbiologist, such as R.S.Hanson, R. Colwell or D.White. The book is comprehensive, comprehensible and very well structured. The reference list at the end of each chapter gives valuable information for further reading. I had a lot of fun reading this book, because it contains valuable information necesssary for hands-on microbiologists. Overall, I highly recommend this book for every environmental microbiologist.