Development of Microbial Ecological Theory: Stability, Plasticity, and Evolution of Microbial Ecosystems

Development of Microbial Ecological Theory: Stability, Plasticity, and Evolution of Microbial Ecosystems PDF Author: Shin Haruta
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889451690
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
“How can we develop microbial ecological theory?” The development of microbial ecological theory has a long way to reach its goal. Advances in microbial ecological techniques provide novel insights into microbial ecosystems. Articles in this book are challenging to determine the central and general tenets of the ecological theory that describes the features of microbial ecosystems. Their achievements expand the frontiers of current microbial ecology and propose the next step. Assemblage of these diverse articles hopefully helps to go on this long journey with many avenues for advancement of microbial ecology.

Development of Microbial Ecological Theory: Stability, Plasticity, and Evolution of Microbial Ecosystems

Development of Microbial Ecological Theory: Stability, Plasticity, and Evolution of Microbial Ecosystems PDF Author: Shin Haruta
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889451690
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
“How can we develop microbial ecological theory?” The development of microbial ecological theory has a long way to reach its goal. Advances in microbial ecological techniques provide novel insights into microbial ecosystems. Articles in this book are challenging to determine the central and general tenets of the ecological theory that describes the features of microbial ecosystems. Their achievements expand the frontiers of current microbial ecology and propose the next step. Assemblage of these diverse articles hopefully helps to go on this long journey with many avenues for advancement of microbial ecology.

Biotechnological Applications of Extremophilic Microorganisms

Biotechnological Applications of Extremophilic Microorganisms PDF Author: Natuschka M. Lee
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110424363
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
This book provides a broad overview how extremophiles can be used in biotechnology, including for the production and degradation of compounds. It reviews various recent discoveries and applications related to a large variety of extremophiles, considering both prokaryotes as well as eukaryotes.

The causes and consequences of microbial community structure

The causes and consequences of microbial community structure PDF Author: Diana Reid Nemergut
Publisher: Frontiers E-books
ISBN: 2889193616
Category : Microbiology
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The causes and consequences of differences in microbial community structure, defined here as the relative proportions of rare and abundant organisms within a community, are poorly understood. Articles in “The Causes and Consequences of Microbial Community Structure”, use empirical or modeling approaches as well as literature reviews to enrich our mechanistic understanding of the controls over the relationship between community structure and ecosystem processes. Specifically, authors address the role of trait distributions and tradeoffs, species-species interactions, evolutionary dynamics, community assembly processes and physical controls in affecting ‘who’s there’ and ‘what they are doing.’

The Social Biology of Microbial Communities

The Social Biology of Microbial Communities PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309264324
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 633

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Book Description
Beginning with the germ theory of disease in the 19th century and extending through most of the 20th century, microbes were believed to live their lives as solitary, unicellular, disease-causing organisms . This perception stemmed from the focus of most investigators on organisms that could be grown in the laboratory as cellular monocultures, often dispersed in liquid, and under ambient conditions of temperature, lighting, and humidity. Most such inquiries were designed to identify microbial pathogens by satisfying Koch's postulates.3 This pathogen-centric approach to the study of microorganisms produced a metaphorical "war" against these microbial invaders waged with antibiotic therapies, while simultaneously obscuring the dynamic relationships that exist among and between host organisms and their associated microorganisms-only a tiny fraction of which act as pathogens. Despite their obvious importance, very little is actually known about the processes and factors that influence the assembly, function, and stability of microbial communities. Gaining this knowledge will require a seismic shift away from the study of individual microbes in isolation to inquiries into the nature of diverse and often complex microbial communities, the forces that shape them, and their relationships with other communities and organisms, including their multicellular hosts. On March 6 and 7, 2012, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop to explore the emerging science of the "social biology" of microbial communities. Workshop presentations and discussions embraced a wide spectrum of topics, experimental systems, and theoretical perspectives representative of the current, multifaceted exploration of the microbial frontier. Participants discussed ecological, evolutionary, and genetic factors contributing to the assembly, function, and stability of microbial communities; how microbial communities adapt and respond to environmental stimuli; theoretical and experimental approaches to advance this nascent field; and potential applications of knowledge gained from the study of microbial communities for the improvement of human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health and toward a deeper understanding of microbial diversity and evolution. The Social Biology of Microbial Communities: Workshop Summary further explains the happenings of the workshop.

Competition and Coexistence

Competition and Coexistence PDF Author: Ulrich Sommer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642561667
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The question "Why are there so many species?" has puzzled ecologist for a long time. Initially, an academic question, it has gained practical interest by the recent awareness of global biodiversity loss. Species diversity in local ecosystems has always been discussed in relation to the problem of competi tive exclusion and the apparent contradiction between the competitive exclu sion principle and the overwhelming richness of species found in nature. Competition as a mechanism structuring ecological communities has never been uncontroversial. Not only its importance but even its existence have been debated. On the one extreme, some ecologists have taken competi tion for granted and have used it as an explanation by default if the distribu tion of a species was more restricted than could be explained by physiology and dispersal history. For decades, competition has been a core mechanism behind popular concepts like ecological niche, succession, limiting similarity, and character displacement, among others. For some, competition has almost become synonymous with the Darwinian "struggle for existence", although simple plausibility should tell us that organisms have to struggle against much more than competitors, e.g. predators, parasites, pathogens, and envi ronmental harshness.

The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems

The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems PDF Author: J. Philip Grime
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118223276
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
THE EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIES THAT SHAPE ECOSYSTEMS In 1837 a young Charles Darwin took his notebook, wrote “I think”, and then sketched a rudimentary, stick-like tree. Each branch of Darwin’s tree of life told a story of survival and adaptation – adaptation of animals and plants not just to the environment but also to life with other living things. However, more than 150 years since Darwin published his singular idea of natural selection, the science of ecology has yet to account for how contrasting evolutionary outcomes affect the ability of organisms to coexist in communities and to regulate ecosystem functioning. In this book Philip Grime and Simon Pierce explain how evidence from across the world is revealing that, beneath the wealth of apparently limitless and bewildering variation in detailed structure and functioning, the essential biology of all organisms is subject to the same set of basic interacting constraints on life-history and physiology. The inescapable resulting predicament during the evolution of every species is that, according to habitat, each must adopt a predictable compromise with regard to how they use the resources at their disposal in order to survive. The compromise involves the investment of resources in either the effort to acquire more resources, the tolerance of factors that reduce metabolic performance, or reproduction. This three-way trade-off is the irreducible core of the universal adaptive strategy theory which Grime and Pierce use to investigate how two environmental filters selecting, respectively, for convergence and divergence in organism function determine the identity of organisms in communities, and ultimately how different evolutionary strategies affect the functioning of ecosystems. This book refl ects an historic phase in which evolutionary processes are finally moving centre stage in the effort to unify ecological theory, and animal, plant and microbial ecology have begun to find a common theoretical framework. Companion website This book has a companion website www.wiley.com/go/grime/evolutionarystrategies with Figures and Tables from the book for downloading.

Ecological Genomics

Ecological Genomics PDF Author: Christian R. Landry
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400773471
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Researchers in the field of ecological genomics aim to determine how a genome or a population of genomes interacts with its environment across ecological and evolutionary timescales. Ecological genomics is trans-disciplinary by nature. Ecologists have turned to genomics to be able to elucidate the mechanistic bases of the biodiversity their research tries to understand. Genomicists have turned to ecology in order to better explain the functional cellular and molecular variation they observed in their model organisms. We provide an advanced-level book that covers this recent research and proposes future development for this field. A synthesis of the field of ecological genomics emerges from this volume. Ecological Genomics covers a wide array of organisms (microbes, plants and animals) in order to be able to identify central concepts that motivate and derive from recent investigations in different branches of the tree of life. Ecological Genomics covers 3 fields of research that have most benefited from the recent technological and conceptual developments in the field of ecological genomics: the study of life-history evolution and its impact of genome architectures; the study of the genomic bases of phenotypic plasticity and the study of the genomic bases of adaptation and speciation.

Gene Transfer in the Environment

Gene Transfer in the Environment PDF Author: Stuart B. Levy
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description


Biological Diversity and Function in Soils

Biological Diversity and Function in Soils PDF Author: Richard Bardgett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521847095
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
The dynamic nature of current research into soil biodiversity is reflected in this excellent volume.

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology PDF Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128004266
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 2138

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Book Description
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, Four Volume Set is the definitive go-to reference in the field of evolutionary biology. It provides a fully comprehensive review of the field in an easy to search structure. Under the collective leadership of fifteen distinguished section editors, it is comprised of articles written by leading experts in the field, providing a full review of the current status of each topic. The articles are up-to-date and fully illustrated with in-text references that allow readers to easily access primary literature. While all entries are authoritative and valuable to those with advanced understanding of evolutionary biology, they are also intended to be accessible to both advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Broad topics include the history of evolutionary biology, population genetics, quantitative genetics; speciation, life history evolution, evolution of sex and mating systems, evolutionary biogeography, evolutionary developmental biology, molecular and genome evolution, coevolution, phylogenetic methods, microbial evolution, diversification of plants and fungi, diversification of animals, and applied evolution. Presents fully comprehensive content, allowing easy access to fundamental information and links to primary research Contains concise articles by leading experts in the field that ensures current coverage of each topic Provides ancillary learning tools like tables, illustrations, and multimedia features to assist with the comprehension process