INTRODUCTION

Evolutionary biology and microbiology, with the ushering in of the molecular revolution, developed a tenuous relationship (Woese, 1994). Further isolating these disciplines, once unified university biology departments split in two, with organismal versus molecular emphases. Because phage biologists were pioneers in molecular biology, they were placed on the molecular side of the divide along with the rest of microbiology, whereas evolutionary biologists, with their less reductionist approaches to biology, were grouped with researchers in zoology, botany, paleontology, and ecology (Rouch, 1997). Consequently, microbiologists were physically isolated from model organism researchers such as Drosophila evolutionary geneticists, and intellectually removed from discoveries such as rapid ecological radiations of wild populations and theories explaining biodiversity and speciation. Evolutionary biologists, in turn, were isolated from microbial experiments that bore on evolution, even though some historically significant discoveries in evolutionary biology used microbes, especially bacteriophages. Despite these past rifts, there exists a newfound appreciation for the power of using microbes to explore evolution and ecology: as molecular researchers had long realized, there are profound advantages to employing small, relatively simple, and rapidly replicating organisms as models for deciphering universal biological truths. Microbiologists, too, in this age of genomics, are increasingly aware of the crucial importance of ecology and evolution in their research.