The development of ideas on the structure of soil microbial communities

Concepts of the structure of soil microbial communities have greatly develo ped since the beginning of the 20th century: new directions of investigatio n (functional, morphological, taxonomic, ecological) appeared, the set of t he scales of research increased (from microlocal to geographical and global ), and quantitative estimations gradually replaced qualitative descriptions . We see prospects for further development of soil microbiology in the simu ltaneous using of different methods to obtain a comprehensive characteristi c of soil microbial communities.