Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Robert G. Wetzel Collegiate Professorship in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Inaugural Public Lecture: Taming the Killer Lakes of Africa

Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - 4:00pm

The explosive release of carbon dioxide gas from Lakes Nyos and ­Monoun in Cameroon resulted in the loss of nearly 1800 lives.  As natural hazards, these exploding lakes were new to science, and studies soon revealed that without intervention the gas would accumulate in the lakes again and result in repeat disasters.  This presentation describes the dynamics and dangers of these lakes and the steps taken for the risk reduction and prevention of further natural catastrophes.

Aaron King, Ph.D.

A major project of the lab involves trying to determine the underlying cause or causes of the current pertussis resurgence in the U.S., Britain, and some other countries. To do this, we confront mathematical models of transmission and immunity with data on pertussis dynamics from a variety of sources. We develop and use very sophisticated, computationally-intensive algorithms for performing statistical inference on dynamical systems.

Do microbial community assembly processes matter for ecosystem function?

Thursday, November 6, 2014 - 4:00pm
Diana Nemergut
Associate Professor, INSTAAR / University of Colorado, Boulder
Department of Biology, Duke University

The forces that structure ecological communities are the subject of much debate, particularly for microorganisms. Likewise, the relationships between microbial community assembly, biodiversity and ecosystem function are poorly understood. Here, I present a hypothesis describing a potential role for community assembly processes in microbial function, highlighting the potential importance of stochastic processes in decoupling the environment from processes of interest.

The evolution of drug resistant pathogens: principles and practice

Monday, September 15, 2014 - 4:00pm
Andrew Read
Alumni Professor in the Biological Sciences, Pennsylvania State University

The evolution of drug resistant microbes is one of the key challenges for 21st century medicine. Drug use practices vigorously advocated as resistance management tools by professional bodies, public health agencies and medical schools represent humankind’s largest attempts to manage evolution. Yet some of these practices seem to sit uncomfortably with ecological and evolutionary principles, or at the very least, seem overly simplistic. I will illustrate this by examining the advice that patients should keep taking their antibiotics even when they feel better.

Byron Smith

Studies of complex microbial communities are limited by a lack of cultured taxa and challenges in designing relevant experimental manipulations.  "Meta-omics" methods are one way to overcome this, generating large quantities of highly multidimensional data that can inform detailed observational studies.  I am interested in developing and using advanced bioinformatic and statistical approaches to harness these data for biological insights that go beyond correlations and that inform our mechanistic understanding of microbial processes.  For my dissertation research I study the effects of long

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