Microbial Evolution & Ecology: Environments to Host

2.0; 3.0 credits · Undergraduate

We live within a microbial world, with microbes providing important functions across ecosystems and having critical impacts on the health of diverse hosts. This course provides an advanced undergraduate and graduate level introduction to how microbes function within ecological communities and how microbes evolve. This will include microbes in environmental habitats and in pathogenic and mutualistic interactions with eukaryotic hosts. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how ecological and evolutionary concepts are applied to microbes and how researchers study these processes. The course will develop conceptual understanding and skills for undergraduate and graduate level research in environmental microbiology, microbial ecology, host-microbe interactions, and microbiome science.