Sarah M. Kopac

TL;DR: Bacteria sampled from the Bacillus subtilis-Bacillus licheniformis clade were found to be significantly different in their associations with solar exposure and soil texture, suggesting that these and covarying environmental parameters are among the dimensions of ecological divergence for newly divergent Bacillus ecotypes.

TL;DR: Comparing the genomes of extremely close relatives within a recognized taxon and analyzing the genomes for evidence of ecological distinctness found no evidence of qualitative divergence in the set of resources utilized, consistent with the nanoniche model of bacterial speciation.

TL;DR: A model that describes how hosts and their microbial symbionts alter each other's niche and thereby fitness is presented, and a mathematical model is provided to test whether interactions between hosts and microbes are necessary to describe the niche of either partner.

TL;DR: This chapter discusses bacterial species and describes a protocol for selecting ecotypes which is pragmatic because it identifies the likely ecotypes through universally available and applicable techniques of genomics and DNA sequencing, as well as computer algorithms to recognize the ecotypes from sequence diversity patterns.

TL;DR: Genome comparisons have shown that several clades of Escherichia isolated primarily from non-host habitats are adapted to life outside of hosts, and that these very close relatives of E. coli have historically not shared environments with gut-associated E.—coli.