The scope of this book remains that of the first edition: to make protozoologists as
well as ecologists aware of the role protozoa play in nature. We emphasise functional
properties of different protozoan phenotypes and experimental work, as well as
properties of the habitats in which the different protozoan species live.
During the last few decades, genomic approaches have enjoyed increasing popularity in the context of microbial ecology. There is no question that the development of molecular biology has had a tremendous impact on biological sciences—among many other aspects and in our context, a fundamentally new understanding of the phylogeny of microbial organisms and also in unravelling complexes of sibling species. But it is not—as some seem to believe—a substitute for organismal biology: the study of phenotypic traits and the environment in which the different organisms live, which is our purpose with the book: microbial ecology is more than just SSU ribosomal DNA sequencing. In this book, we have also cited many “older” works, that is, from the “pre DNA-sequencing era” which still contain many important discoveries and observations.