Microbial Population Biology

I have posted a review by William Rice on the Assignments page. As I mentioned, it is comprehensive and dense, so it would be helpful for you to write an outline of the major answers to “Why sex?” found in the paper. Please post this outline, along with your commentary on the [...]

The growth curve data from your environmental isolates are in, and they can be found here:
713 isolate growth curves
With this spreadsheet, you now have enough data to figure out who is the lucky winner of the grand prize for the inaugural running of the Bacterial Triathlon. The prize can be picked from the following [...]

1st place: Lanzer (4.5cm)       Location: soil + water, stream under MUB
2nd place: Baker (3.0 cm)      Location: water + plant material, stream between MUB and Spaulding
3rd place: Scott (2.5 cm)       Location: water + muck, stream between grate and bridge (near Spaulding)
4th place: Jarrett (0.3 cm)   Location: foam [...]

Dear class,
On Tuesday 10/23 we will complete discussion of the evolution of specialization (my work) and begin discussion of the evolution of mutation rates. To support this discussion, please read, for this week, the articles posted on the Assignments page:
http://micropopbio.org/cooper/2007/10/22/evolution-of-mutation-rates/
Enjoy! And remember that we’ll finish up early tomorrow to pick colonies isolated from [...]

Hi gang,
Back in the saddle again for me, but you have all been doing some serious work in the meantime. From your blog entries, I see that you raised two families of questions about the Rainey et al. work:
1) Are phenotypically similar (but perhaps not identical)  morphs that occupy the same niche (WS) functionally and/or [...]

I found the idea of choosing a flagship blog difficult but in reverence to Darwin I chose to use  my latest blog: Why I chose it was simple. Darwin tried to make sense of his observations of  the results of millions of years of evolution in his work by studying reminants of the past and [...]

 When asked to present the “best” piece to highlight, I am not sure it is fair to choose only one. However, my recent blog on Travisano, et. al. was commented on and perhaps may describe some important points. Below I have summarized the post and have linked to the full text near the end.
 Thanks for [...]

My favorite blog thus far has been the one in response to the species question. It is a question I have thought about a lot before this class from the work in my lab, but I haven’t had a background in microbial ecological thinking before this class.  I also really enjoy the “history” question which [...]

So far, I think my best post is the response to the Whitaker paper.  After making a few minor revisions and changing the title, I feel this post best reflects my thoughts on any of the articles that we have read so far.  I liked the Whitaker article because of the discussion that it generated [...]

There will be no class on tuesday.  If you have any questions please email me at srg22@unh.edu.
Steffen