Relating ecological diversity to genetic discontinuity across bacterial species

Table 1 Genomic and ecological characteristics of 15 representative species. Genetic discontinuity (δ) represents the steepest change (break) in genomic identity distribution from a representative genome. The saturation coefficient (α) indicates pangenome openness: the higher the α value, the more closed the pangenome is. Core proportion refers to the ratio between the number of core genes and pangenome size of each species

Species	Lifestyle^a	\(\delta\)	\(\alpha\)	Core prop
Coxiella burnetii	Obligate intracellular	0.291	0.930	0.672
Treponema pallidum	Obligate pathogen	0.256	0.959	0.855
Mycoplasmoides pneumoniae	Obligate intracellular	0.228	0.967	0.755
Metamycoplasma hominis	Obligate intracellular	0.175	0.832	0.471
Chlamydia trachomatis	Obligate intracellular	0.154	0.976	0.895
Mycobacterium tuberculosis	Obligate pathogen	0.102	0.932	0.639
Staphylococcus aureus	Opportunistic pathogen	0.053	0.844	0.306
Acinetobacter baumannii	Opportunistic pathogen	0.039	0.073	0.152
Agrobacterium tumefaciens	Plant pathogen	0.034	0.764	0.312
Pseudomonas syringae	Plant pathogen	0.030	0.708	0.189
Rhizobium leguminosarum	Symbiont	0.024	0.704	0.230
Klebsiella pneumoniae	Opportunistic pathogen	0.016	0.730	0.161
Bacillus cereus	Free-living	0.012	0.640	0.085
Escherichia coli	Free-living	0.011	0.696	0.149
Helicobacter pylori	Free-living	0.010	0.725	0.189

^aLifestyles are classified according to predominant behaviors described in the literature. For instance, Escherichia coli can display dual behaviors, being predominantly free-living but also including pathogenic strains such as serotype O157

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