Processes in Microbial Ecology

Abstract

Abstract This book, which discusses the major processes carried out by viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and other protists – the microbes – in freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems, focuses on biogeochemical processes, starting with primary production and the initial fixation of carbon into cellular biomass. It then discusses how that carbon is degraded in both oxygen-rich (oxic) and oxygen-deficient (anoxic) environments. These biogeochemical processes are affected by ecological interactions, including competition for limiting nutrients, viral lysis, and predation by various protists in soils and aquatic habitats. The book links up processes occurring at the micron scale to events happening at the global scale, including the carbon cycle and its connection to climate change issues, and ends with a chapter devoted to symbiosis and other relationships between microbes and large organisms. Microbes have large impacts not only on biogeochemical cycles, but also on the ecology and evolution of large organisms, including Homo sapiens.