Assistant Professor of Microbiology University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks, Alaska, United States
Microbial communities often experience periods of resource limitation. In some systems resource limitation is predictable and even constant, but in other systems it is stochastic. Regardless, microbial physiology influences the response to resource limitation and effects the carbon cycle. In this talk, we will consider direct and indirect interactions between growth efficiency and resource limitation, and we will ask if growth efficiency is fixed or if it reflects adaptations to current and past conditions. Specifically, we will consider how maintenance energy, respiration rates, and biomass production rates influence growth efficiency, and we will discuss how physiological adaptations drive each process.
