Microbial communities

Microbial population biology is the application of the principles of population biology to microorganisms.

Microbial population biology, in practice, is the application of population ecology and population genetics toward understanding the ecology and evolution of bacteria, archaebacteria, microscopic fungi (such as yeasts), additional microscopic eukaryotes (e.g., "protozoa" and algae), and viruses.

Microbial population biology also encompasses the evolution and ecology of community interactions (community ecology) between microorganisms, including microbial coevolution and predator-prey interactions. In addition, microbial population biology considers microbial interactions with more macroscopic organisms (e.g., host-parasite interactions), though strictly this should be more from the perspective of the microscopic rather than the macroscopic organism. A good deal of microbial population biology may be described also as microbial evolutionary ecology. On the other hand, typically microbial population biologists (unlike microbial ecologists) are less concerned with questions of the role of microorganisms in ecosystem ecology, which is the study of nutrient cycling and energy movement between biotic as well as abiotic components of ecosystems.

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