High‐Throughput Sequencing: A Roadmap Toward Community Ecology

High‐throughput sequencing is becoming increasingly important in microbial ecology, yet it is surprisingly under‐used to generate or test biogeographic hypotheses. In this contribution, we highlight how adding these methods to the ecologist toolbox will allow the detection of new patterns, and will help our understanding of the structure and dynamics of diversity. Starting with a review of ecological questions that can be addressed, we move on to the technical and analytical issues that will benefit from an increased collaboration between different disciplines. We highlight promising directions in which an increased use of high‐throughput sequencing can benefit ecology, and build bridges between microbial ecology and biogeography.