A New Set of Substrates Proposed for Community Characterization in Environmental Samples

Abstract

The selection of substrates offered on commercially available multisubstrate plates (Biolog®, PhenePlate®) is not targeted at environmental samples. In a post-conference workshop of the SUBMECO conference at Innsbruck, Austria (Oct. 16–18, 1996) the need for a set of substrates meeting the requirements of environmental analyses was recognized. Further, a reduction in the number of substrates was advised to allow statistics at a reasonable number of replications (Hitzl et al., 1997b). Also Haack et al. (1995) argued that far less substrates than the 95 offered on the Biolog plates are sufficient to distinguish between microbial communities of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. According to the information given by Hitzl et al. (1997a), Campbell et al. (1997), Bochner (pers. comm.) and to previous experience with phenolic compounds (Burkhardt et al., 1993) I proposed a 96-well microplate with 31 substrates plus control, each in 3 replications (Table 1). Such ‘EcoPlates’ are now available from Biolog®.