Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Discuss the predator-prey cycleGive examples of defenses against predation and herbivoryDescribe the competitive exclusion principleGive examples of symbiotic relationships between speciesDescribe community structure and succession

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Bacteria and other microorganisms cover nearly every surface on earth, including the surfaces we build and maintain. Ocean piers are unique sites at the intersection of terrestrial, aquatic, and human-built environments. Saltwater spray, inclement weather, and pollutants make piers a harsh environment for bacteria. Together, these factors suggest that piers house a unique microbiome. Researchers recently conducted a study to characterize the microbiomes found on pier surfaces. On nine piers along the coast of Hong Kong, the researchers found diverse microbiomes that were rich in novel bacterial species. Surface material (metal versus concrete) was the strongest factor influencing the bacterial community structure. Although the overall abundance was low, corrosion-associated bacteria were more prevalent on metal surfaces, and high-touch surfaces like handrails and poles had more human skin-associated microbes than other surfaces..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Managing wastewater is a major logistical puzzle that impacts the environment, the climate, and public health. While metropolitan wastewater typically undergoes complex processing and sanitation, rural livestock wastewater is often simply composted for fertilizer, but composting can release harmful contaminants like ammonia, CO₂, and methane. One way to still capture the nutrients with fewer harmful byproducts is by cultivating microalgae, which actually absorb CO₂ via photosynthesis rather than producing it. But how do microalgae impact pathogens? A recent pilot study using raw piggery wastewater found that microalgae cultivation dramatically reduced the pathogen load while also triggering a dramatic shift in the overall bacterial community composition. Further investigation using the most abundant pathogen, Oligella, found that the microalgae weren’t impacting Oligella directly. Rather, microalgae cultivation reduced Oligella abundance through a network of other bacterial species..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Plants are intimately connected to the microbiomes they host. These microbial communities provide plants with nutrients. and protection from environmental stress. While scientists know that plant-derived factors shape the composition of microbiomes. it’s unclear whether host evolution also plays a role. To find out, researchers recently investigated seeds of the genus Oryza, the common rice plant. They examined the effects of speciation and domestication of rice on seed microbiomes. and found that speciation gave rise to distinct communities of bacteria and fungi in seeds. Similarly, domestication tended to produce variations in the composition of fungal communities while conserving bacterial communities. These findings indicate that while evolutionary processes can affect microbiome composition in random fashion. the environmental changes that accompany domestication contribute to the assembly of microbiomes in deterministic ways..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Chickens are an important source of proteins for humans. Chicken diets are therefore formulated to enhance production efficiency and human health. But few studies have explored how industrial production system parameters affect certain pathogens in the chicken gut, such as Campylobacter, the leading cause of human foodborne bacterial gastroenteritis. A recent study examined how the presence of Campylobacter in the chicken gut microbiome varied across three different production systems, one based on a normal production system, and two based on higher welfare with and without omega-3. The standard production system produced a significantly different microbial composition than the other systems, with bacteria of the genus Alistipes playing a more prominent role in the gut microbiome of chickens from the normal production system, and Eisenbergiella playing a more prominent role in the other two production systems. These bacteria play active roles in energy metabolism and nutrient uptake..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Oceans connect all life and affect climate worldwide, and interestingly, the ocean’s smallest residents have a huge role in this process. The ocean microbiota modulates global biogeochemical cycles, which influences energy balance in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the underlying factors structuring the ocean microbiota are unclear, and better understanding is needed to help combat the effects of global climate change. A recent study examined the ecological mechanisms shaping the smallest surface-ocean microbiota: prokaryotes and picoeukaryotes. Researchers identified patterns in DNA sequencing data collected by two global ocean expeditions, Malaspina-2010 and Tara Oceans. Their results showed that different ecological mechanisms affect prokaryotes vs. picoeukaryotes. While picoeukaryotes were largely structured by dispersal limitation, displaying higher differentiation between communities, prokaryotes were structured by a combination of temperature-driven selection, dispersal limitation and random drift..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Viruses that infect bacteria and archaea are abundant in human and environmental microbiomes. Their roles in manipulating, killing, and recycling microbes makes them key players in environmental processes and human health and disease, including inflammatory bowel diseases. In spite of their importance, the tools available for analyzing viral genomes are limited. Now, a new tool allows researchers to identify viruses and predict their functions using genomic data. VIBRANT (Virus Identification By iteRative ANnoTation), is the first software to use a hybrid machine learning and protein similarity approach. going beyond traditional limitations to maximize the identification of highly diverse viruses. In validation experiments with reference datasets, VIBRANT recovered higher-quality virus sequences and reduced false identification of non-viral genome fragments compared to other identification programs..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Microbiomes across the entire planet connect numerous microorganisms to one another, but how are these communities themselves connected across the globe? To find out, researchers recently analyzed the massive Earth Microbiome Project dataset, which pools data about microbial life from around the world. The result was a planet-sized co-occurrence network of microorganisms. The network consists of 8 taxonomically distinct modules, each associated with a distinct environment. Studying the network’s shape revealed microbial relationships that are essential to certain microbiomes, including relationships characterized by distinct levels of competition or niche differentiation. The network highlights the importance of understanding co-occurrence features of microbiomes and could offer global insight into how and why microbes are connected..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.