+44 330 818 7254Agriculture, bioremediation, disease, and biogeochemical cycling are all heavily influenced by microbial communities. However, it has been challenging to separate the varying impacts of the ecological processes that control the assembly of microbial communities. Microbial systems are being studied at various spatial, temporal, and phylogenetic scales, according to our hypothesis here. We argue that microbial community assembly can be better understood by taking into account spatial, temporal, and phylogenetic grains and extents, which are the two components of scale, more explicitly. This will allow us to demonstrate that distinct processes dominate at various scales. By focusing on taxa area relationships, nastiness, legacy effects, and the application of ecological scale concepts to microbiology, we demonstrate the value of doing so. The long-standing debates in microbial ecology regarding the processes that determine the assembly of microbial communities will be resolved by these proposed scale conditions, and they will serve as organizing principles for the development of hypotheses and theories.
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