Speaker: Jennifer B.H. Martiny, Professor, University of California Irvine

The assembly of microbial communities is likely influenced by both ecological and evolutionary processes. At one end of the spectrum, the composition of microbial communities (assessed at broad taxonomic levels) dramatically shifts in response to environmental changes. At the other end, laboratory studies demonstrate the potential for rapid evolution in response to the similar environmental changes. In between these two extremes, closely related microbial strains coexist in natural communities, and this standing variation results in allele frequency shifts within microbial taxa. New advances in microbial population genomics allow us to investigate these blurry eco-evo boundaries. I will present our recent approaches to investigate ecological and evolutionary processes simultaneously in soil microbial communities.