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Workshop 6: Microbial Ecology (May 15-19, 2006)

Organizers: Frede Thingstad and George Jackson

Microbial ecology is the study of how micro-organisms interact with each other and with their environment. The whole field is thus a study of a dynamic system where properties of the system emerge from the constraints imposed by the chemistry of the environment, physical laws, and the biological strategies that have evolved in the interacting micro-organisms. The struggle to understand these interactions implies the analysis of phenomena occurring on spatial scales from that of viruses (10-8m) to that of ocean chlorophyll distributions (10⁶m) and on time scales from milliseconds to a few billion years; for example, from the biophysical processes of photosynthesis to those of biological evolution. Such analysis creates an interface that demands insight into both biology and mathematics.

Microbial ecology is also a field that evolves rapidly. Molecular techniques have allowed experimentalists to address questions concerning, for example, microbial diversity, unanswerable with traditional methods. Micro-organisms unknown a few decades ago have been shown to be among the most abundant organisms on earth such as, for example, the tiny cyanobacteria dominating primary production in large parts of the ocean, and SAR11, a bacterium which is probably the most abundant organism on earth, but whose function in the ecosystem is still obscure.

The objective of this workshop is to describe areas in microbial ecology where the tools of mathematics have been used to provide insight into the phenomena.