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Bergey’s Manual Trust
• What is Bergey’s Manual Trust?
– Non-profit, private organization
– Produces updated classification and
descriptive information of bacterial and
archaeal species
– Volunteers – members, associates and
authors
– BMT Editorial Office is at Department of
Microbiology, University of Georgia
Goals of Bergey’s Manual Trust
• Provide up-to-date description of all Bacteria
and Archaea
• Provide unofficial classification of Bacteria and
Archaea using phylogeny based on 16S rDNA
sequences
• Provide inexpensive resource on bacterial taxa
for science community
• Promote taxonomy of Bacteria and Archaea
through publications and scientific meetings
History of Bergey’s Manual Trust
• Formed in 1936 as a unique American science
organization which soon developed to an international
level
• Founding Trustees - David Henricks Bergey, Robert
Stanley Breed and Everitt G.D. Murray
• Outgrowth of Society for Bacteriology (now the American
Society for Microbiology)
• Contracted with Williams and Wilkins to publish Bergey’s
Manual of Determinative Bacteriology of which 9 editions
have been published
• Supported by royalties from publications
Current Trustees
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M. Goodfellow – Chair – United Kingdom
P. Kaempfer – Vice Chair – Germany
W. Whitman – Treasurer – USA
F. Rainey – Secretary – USA
P. De Vos – Belgium
J. Chun - Korea
Current Publications
• Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology,
9th edition – 1994, still available and selling
• Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology,
2nd edition – 5 volumes
– Volumes 1, 2 and 3 have been published, Volume 4 is
in press and Volume 5 is near completion
– All 5 volumes should be in print by end of 2010
– Current publisher: Springer
Authors and Audience
• Approximately 600 international authors for the
2nd edition of Bergey’s Manual of Systematic
Bacteriology – experts in a particular taxonomic
group
• Global audience of microbiologists and other
professionals (e.g., biodiversity community,
animal and human health community,
undergraduate and graduate students)
Other Activities of Bergey’s Manual Trust
• Provide a Taxonomic Outline of the Bacteria and
Archaea
• Bergey Award
– Recognizes young to middle-aged scientists who have and
continue to make significant contributions to bacterial taxonomy
• Bergey Medal
– Recognizes senior scientists who have made life-long
contributions to the field of systematic bacteriology.
• Promotes the field of bacterial taxonomy
– Sponsoring sessions at microbiological conferences
• ISBA-14 in Newcastle UK -2007
• IUMS conference in Istanbul -2009
• FEMS conference in Gothenburg -2009
Volume 3 - 2009
Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology
Volume 3: The Firmicutes
Includes a revised taxonomic outline for the Firmicutes based upon the SILVA
project as well as a description of more than 1346 species and 240 genera
belonging to the phylum Firmicutes, which are also called the low mol% G+C
Gram positive prokaryotes.
Major taxa to be included are:
Alicyclobacillus, Bacillus, Clostridium, Enterococcus, Erysipelothrix,
Eubacterium, Haloanaerobium, Heliobacterium, Lachnospira, Lactobacillus,
Leuconostoc, Listeria, Paenibacillus, Peptococcus, Ruminococcus,
Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Syntrophomonas, Thermoactinomyces,
Thermoanaerobacter, Veillonella and additional genera.
Includes many medically and industrially important taxa....
Looking inside a volume
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Taxonomic outline
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Descriptions of taxa at all levels:
– Upper level taxa: phyla, classes, orders, families
– Lower level taxa: genera, species, subspecies
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Taking Volume 3 as an example: total of 1450 pages
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Phyla – 1
Classes – 3
Orders – 6
Families – 44
Genera – 240
Species – 1346
Example chapter – the genus Caldicellulosirupter
Moving from paper to digital
• Considerations:
– Amount of material and information
• Vols 1, 2 (B,C) and 3 comprise 4667 pages
• 1269 genera and >8,000 species Vols 1-5
• Each species between 100 – 200 characters
– Moving target
• New taxa published each month in IJSEM
• Current number of genera not included in Vols
1-5 = ~580
– What does the user need?
The way forward…….
• Some options:
– With what we have right now:
• Web access to PDFs of individual chapters
• Web page version – searchable and fully linked
– New products:
• Wiki type format – easily updated by specific authors
• The information in a web database
• Issues:
– Who actually owns these data? Bergey’s has
copyright on printed books but the data all comes
from primary literature
– How to fund the updating and curation of these data
– How often should the data be updated?