Summary: Technical developments in molecular biology have found extensive applications in the field of microbial ecology. Among these techniques, fingerprinting methods such as denaturing gel electrophoresis (DGE, including the three options: DGGE, TGGE and TTGE) has been applied to environmental samples over this last decade. Microbial ecologists took advantage of this technique, originally developed for the detection of single mutations, for the analysis of whole bacterial communities. However, until recently, the results of these high quality fingerprinting patterns were restricted to a visual interpretation, neglecting the analytical potential of the method in terms of statistical significance and ecological interpretation. A brief recall is presented here about the principles and limitations of DGE fingerprinting analysis, with an emphasis on the need of standardization of the whole analytical process. The main content focuses on statistical strategies for analysing the gel patterns, from single band examination to the analysis of whole fingerprinting profiles. Applying statistical method make the DGE fingerprinting technique a promising tool. Numerous samples can be analysed simultaneously, permitting the monitoring of microbial communities or simply bacterial groups for which occurrence and relative frequency are affected by any environmental parameter. As previously applied in the fields of plant and animal ecology, the use of statistics provides a significant advantage for the non‐ambiguous interpretation of the spatial and temporal functioning of microbial communities.

Aims: To develop a consistent ecological indicator value system for Europe for five of the main plant niche dimensions: soil moisture (M), soil nitrogen (N), soil reaction (R), light (L) and temperature (T). Study area: Europe (and closely adjacent regions). Methods: We identified 31 indicator value systems for vascular plants in Europe that contained assessments on at least one of the five aforementioned niche dimensions. We rescaled the indicator values of each dimension to a continuous scale, in which 0 represents the minimum and 10 the maximum value present in Europe. Taxon names were harmonised to the Euro+Med Plantbase. For each of the five dimensions, we calculated European values for niche position and niche width by combining the values from the individual EIV systems. Using T values as an example, we externally validated our European indicator values against the median of bioclimatic conditions for global occurrence data of the taxa. Results: In total, we derived European indicator values of niche position and niche width for 14,835 taxa (14,714 for M, 13,748 for N, 14,254 for R, 14,054 for L, 14,496 for T). Relating the obtained values for temperature niche position to the bioclimatic data of species yielded a higher correlation than any of the original EIV systems (r = 0.859). The database: The newly developed Ecological Indicator Values for Europe (EIVE) 1.0, together with all source systems, is available in a flexible, harmonised open access database. Conclusions: EIVE is the most comprehensive ecological indicator value system for European vascular plants to date. The uniform interval scales for niche position and niche width provide new possibilities for ecological and macroecological analyses of vegetation patterns. The developed workflow and documentation will facilitate the future release of updated and expanded versions of EIVE, which may for example include the addition of further taxonomic groups, additional niche dimensions, external validation or regionalisation. Abbreviations: EIV = Ecological indicator value; EIVE = Ecological Indicator Values for Europe; EVA = European Vegetation Archive; GBIF = Global Biodiversity Information Facility; i = index for taxa; j = index for EIV systems; L = ecological indicator for light; M = ecological indicator for moisture; N = ecological indicator for nitrogen availability; R = ecological indicator for reaction; T = ecological indicator for temperature.