[b]Every speck of dust, drop of water, and grain of soil and each part of every plant and animal contain their own worlds of microbes.[/b]
Designed as a key text for upper-level undergraduates majoring in microbiology, genetics, or biology, [i]Principles of Microbial Diversity[/i] provides a solid curriculum for students to explore the enormous range of biological diversity in the microbial world. Within these richly illustrated pages, author and professor James W. Brown provides a practical guide to microbial diversity from a phylogenetic perspective in which students learn to construct and interpret evolutionary trees from DNA sequences. He then offers a survey of the «tree of life» that establishes the necessary basic knowledge about the microbial world. Finally, the author draws the student&apos;s attention to the universe of microbial diversity with focused studies of the contributions that specific organisms make to the ecosystem.
[i]Principles of Microbial Diversity[/i] fills an empty niche in microbiology textbooks by providing an engaging, cutting-edge view of the «microbial zoo» that exists around us, covering bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, and viruses.