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For this month's Evolutionary Application Research Highlight, I explored: Disease evolution and ecology across space "How infectious disease spreads both from individual to individual and across a landscape will depend upon many inter-related factors, including the genetic composition of host and pathogen populations, the pathogen transmission rate, host density, population connectivity, and the evolutionary response … Continue reading Disease evolution and ecology across space

Koskella, B. and Taylor, T. B. The potential role of bacteriophages in shaping plant-bacterial interactions, in Plant-Bacterial Interactions, Murillo, J., Jackson, R. W., Arnold, D., and Vinatzer, B. (eds). Horizon Scientific Press, Norwich UK.

Check the papers out here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676888 and http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677032 (press release here: http://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/VPKoskella.html) http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677032

Check out this great piece on phage therapy for plants and people by Michael Gross in Current Biology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214006654 Nice coverage of the work being done in the lab, especially by Sean Meaden.

For this month's Evolutionary Applications research highlights I look at the role of the microbiome in shaping evolution: "Over the past century, the study of genetics has revolutionized our understanding of life on earth. Our knowledge of trait heritability from parent to offspring has been central to predict the trajectory of evolution, studying disease, and … Continue reading The role of the microbiome in shaping evolution

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1574-6976.12072/abstract "Bacteria-phage coevolution, the reciprocal evolution between bacterial hosts and the phages that infect them, is an important driver of ecological and evolutionary processes in microbial communities. There is growing evidence from both laboratory and natural populations that coevolution can maintain phenotypic and genetic diversity, increase the rate of bacterial and phage evolution and divergence, … Continue reading New paper in collaboration with Prof Mike Brockhurst now online and open access  

First research highlight available now: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eva.12146/full "Evolutionary Applications is the only journal specializing specifically in publishing papers that make contributions to fundamental questions in evolutionary biology using study systems that are of practical or applied importance in topics including, but not limited to: agriculture, aquaculture, biomedicine, biotechnology, climate change, conservation biology, disease biology, forestry, invasion biology, … Continue reading Britt is now the research highlights associate editor for Evolutionary Applications

Sean finished his masters project on characterizing the specificity of natural phages from the horse chestnut phyllosphere and has now begun his doctoral work. For his first project, Sean will be examining the costs associated with bacterial resistance to phages in their natural habitats. There is good evidence that resisting parasites is costly, but most … Continue reading Sean Meaden has joined the lab!

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(13)00633-7 "It is increasingly apparent that the dynamic microbial communities of long-lived hosts affect their phenotype, including resistance to disease. The host microbiota will change over time due to immigration of new species, interaction with the host immune system, and selection by bacteriophage viruses (phages), but the relative roles of each process are unclear. Previous … Continue reading My new paper on bacteria-phage coevolution within horse chestnut trees is now out and open access

http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(13)00061-X "Coevolution, the process of reciprocal adaptation and counter-adaptation between ecologically interacting species, affects most organisms and is considered a key force structuring biological diversity. Our understanding of the pattern and process of coevolution, particularly of antagonistic species interactions, has been hugely advanced in recent years by an upsurge in experimental studies that directly observe … Continue reading New paper on the power of experimental coevolution is now online at TREE