Climate change, human health, and biomedical research: analysis of the National Institutes of Health research portfolio.

Background: According to a wide variety of analyses and projections, the potential effects of global climate change on human health are large and diverse. The U.S.

Global climate change and health: developing a research agenda for the NIH.

Global climate change is receiving worldwide attention because of its anticipated impacts on the Earth's physical and biological systems. Through its effects on natural and human environments, climate change will likely impact economic viability and human health and well-being. The impact of climate change on human health is likely to be complex and significant, including effects on cancers, cardiovascular and respiratory disease, food-, water-, and vector-borne diseases, heat-related illness, mental and social well-being, nutrition, trauma, and vulnerable demographic sectors.

Ecology and evolution in microbial systems: the generation and maintenance of diversity in phage-host interactions.

Insights gained from studying the interactions between viruses and bacteria have important implications for the ecology and evolution of virus-host interactions in many environments and for pathogen-host and predator-prey interactions in general. Here, we focus on the generation and maintenance of diversity, highlighting recent laboratory and field experiments with microorganisms.

The shape of an ecological trade-off varies with environment.

Central to most theories that explain the diversity of life is the concept that organisms face trade-offs. Theoretical work has shown that the precise shape of a trade-off relationship affects evolutionary predictions. One common trade-off is that between competitive ability and resistance to predators, parasitoids, pathogens or herbivores.

Big questions, small worlds: microbial model systems in ecology.

Although many biologists have embraced microbial model systems as tools to address genetic and physiological questions, the explicit use of microbial communities as model systems in ecology has traditionally been more restricted. Here, we highlight recent studies that use laboratory-based microbial model systems to address ecological questions. Such studies have significantly advanced our understanding of processes that have proven difficult to study in field systems, including the genetic and biochemical underpinnings of traits involved in ecological interactions, and the ecological differences driving evolutionary change.

Trade-offs and coexistence in microbial microcosms.

Trade-offs among the abilities of organisms to respond to different environmental factors are often assumed to play a major role in the coexistence of species. There has been extensive theoretical study of the role of such trade-offs in ecological communities but it has proven difficult to study such trade-offs experimentally. Microorganisms are ideal model systems with which to experimentally study the causes and consequences of ecological trade-offs.