Evolution and Ecology of Natural Microbial Communities

We now know that microorganisms are astonishingly abundant everywhere, and that their activities affect everything from geology to human behavior. However, most of our current insights into microbial populations have come from mathematical models of their evolution and ecology and from laboratory cultures of model species. Unfortunately, ‘culturable’ species are rare exceptions, since most microorganisms will not grow under laboratory conditions. Natural communities of bacteria are also very diverse; individual isolates of the same species typically differ by 10% of their genes, and communities from seemingly identical environments (e.g. the guts of different humans) often contain very different species.

Tools to investigate microorganisms in their natural habitats have recently become available. Advances in microscopy allow researchers to examine bacterial communities, and sometimes even identify species, with unprecedented resolution. Metagenomics and other culture-independent approaches, originally applied only at very broad taxonomic levels, are becoming increasingly able to distinguish sequences at the level of species or individual lineages.

This conference will bring together research on a wide range of microbial communities, from cheese to caverns, from lakes to lungs, from teeth to the troposphere. In selecting speakers, we will prioritize those who will introduce us to new communities and new phenomena, raising exciting new questions about their evolution, diversity, and consequences. Our long-term goals will be to build understanding of the principles governing the properties of these communities. A key objective will be to identify which of these properties can, and which cannot, be explained by current models of community structure and function.