Most researchers employing reverse ecology make use of some sort of population genomics methodology.
These genome scans usually utilize single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, though use of microsatellites can work as well (with reduced resolution).
By examining the genes of bacteria, scientists are able to reconstruct what the organisms' environments are like today, or even from millions of years ago.
In 2010, researchers presented a technique to carry out reverse ecology to infer a bacteria's living temperature-range conditions based on the GC content of certain genomic regions.
[2] In 2011, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley were able to demonstrate that one can determine an organism's adaptive traits by looking first at its genome and checking for variations across a population.