Evaluation of Some Coefficients for Use in Numerical Taxonomy of Microorganisms

Taxonomic data, obtained for 141 Enterobacteriaceae strains for which 240 unit characters were recorded, were subjected to numerical taxonomy analysis employing 36 coefficients. Clustering was by unweighted average linkage. From sorted similarity matrices, it was found that 15 coefficients, which included SSM, SH, STD, SJ, SNM, SO, SRT, SSHD, Sin−1(SSM), SP, Sø, SUN1, SUN4, SD, and SK2, provided useful discriminating properties. The coefficients SH and STD were found to provide results indistinguishable from SSM, and the coefficients SO and Sø yielded results very similar to those obtained with SSM coefficient.