Myxobacterial diversity of Indian soils - How many species do we have?

Myxobacteria of tropical soils is an under-explored bacterial group. We rep ort here the results of sampling in Pune district of Western Ghats. A numbe r of novel morphotypes were found in forest as well as urban/semi-urban soi ls. There was a high level of floral dissimilarity between habitats. The mo rphotypes detected in Pune district also differed from the northern Indian species recorded earlier. Using a species individual curve on the Pune, Luc know and pooled data, we try to estimate the number of species that are lik ely to be present in India. A plausible estimate is several fold higher tha n the species recorded worldwide so far.