Methods for identifying bacterial species in biofluid samples (e.g., whole blood samples) are described. The methods rely on optical spectroscopy, and enable rapid detection and identification of bacteria directly from whole blood. Not only can LSS-based techniques detect and identify bacteria in biofluids such as whole blood, but that species-level identification can potentially be made based on a small number of bacterial cells, without the need for observing entire colonies or performing susceptibility testing. The methods may comprise illuminating the biofluid sample with input light, detecting scattered light produced by the biofluid sample in response to the illuminating, generating first data indicative of a measured scattering spectrum associated with the biofluid sample using the detected scattered light, and identifying whether at least one of the bacterial species is present in the biofluid sample using the first data.