Category Archives: microbiology

Revealing the natural history of yeast

Posted on 10 Aug, 2022 by Jeremy Yoder

The following is a guest post by Matthew Vandermeulen, PhD, at the University at Buffalo. Matthew studies the regulation of responses to environmental variation; he is on Twitter as @mvandermeulen. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker’s and brewer’s yeast, may be one organism that could contend with dogs … Continue reading →

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Recent reading: 29 April 2022

Posted on 29 Apr, 2022 by Jeremy Yoder

How is this month already almost over? Four weeks ago I was just starting to realize that an unexpected, astonishingly good flowering season for Joshua trees meant I needed to shoehorn in some fieldwork, eyeing the data analysis I needed … Continue reading →

Posted in ecology, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, journal club, microbiology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Shedding light on symbiotic relationships

Posted on 5 Feb, 2021 by Kelle Freel

Lots of critters glow in the dark, but most of them aren’t found in just any back yard…unless that back yard happens to be the beach. The ocean is full of bioluminescent critters that use light to attract prey (possibly … Continue reading →

Posted in community ecology, ecology, microbiology, natural history, Symbiosis | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hosts select symbionts for greater mutual benefit, an evolutionary experiment shows

Posted on 5 Nov, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder

Who’s in charge of a symbiotic mutualism? You might think the host organism, whose body is the venue for an exchange of nutrients or services with a microbial symbiont, is running the show, able to evict or punish symbionts that … Continue reading →

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Serendipitous history in the microbial making

Posted on 24 Jul, 2020 by Kelle Freel

It’s been over 100 years since the Dutch Microbiologist Martinus Willem Beijerinck theorized that microbes could oxidize manganese to generate energy for growth. Last week, the first evidence for this theory was published, and you might be surprised about from … Continue reading →

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The Molecular Ecologist Podcast: Rivers and rabbit resistance

Posted on 6 Jul, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder

A new episode of The Molecular Ecologist Podcast is now out on Anchor.fm. In this episode, Sarah Shainker tells us about how population genetic structure works differently in river drainages; Kelle Freel recaps her reading on the history of rabbits and rabbit-killing viruses … Continue reading →

Posted in Action Item, career, community ecology, conservation, howto, microbiology, TME Podcast | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Molecular Ecologist Podcast: Color me viral edition

Posted on 21 May, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder

A new episode of The Molecular Ecologist Podcast is now out on Anchor.fm. In this episode, Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová discusses resources for using color to make scientific figures clear and appealing; Stacy Krueger-Hadfield tells us about the complex considerations surrounding tracking and controlling … Continue reading →

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The Molecular Ecologist Podcast: #StudentSciComm, diversity within an algae bloom, the origins of a vital mutualism, and population genetics in continuous space

Posted on 13 Apr, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder

A new episode of The Molecular Ecologist Podcast is now out on Anchor.fm. The Molecular Ecologist Podcast made it to a second episode! Thanks for listening to our first one, and for all the positive comments. In addition to our “home” … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, community, community ecology, housekeeping, microbiology, population genetics, Science Communication, TME Podcast | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Virosphere’s Own Trojan Horse

Posted on 10 Apr, 2020 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Melissa Walker wrote this post as a part of Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Melissa’s research focuses on the interactions between freshwater biofilms and the viruses that infect them. She is currently … Continue reading →

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A bloom by any other name

Posted on 7 Apr, 2020 by Kelle Freel

Once a year during the spring, when conditions are juuuuust right, phytoplankton are terrible at social distancing. This annual bloom that takes place in the spring from 35º North in the North Atlantic and reaches all the way to the … Continue reading →

Posted in community ecology, ecology, microbiology | Tagged , | 1 Comment