title: An introduction to micro-ecology patches.
abstract: Bacterial systems offer excellent tests of how well the general theoretical predictions of ecology dynamics do or do not in fact conform to reality. We believe that the basic rules that govern the cohabitation of competing species for limited resources are the same from bacteria to man, we just don't know the rules, and that fundamental studies of the games bacteria play will give fundamental insight into the vastly more complex systems we hope to attack later. In this tutorial review we discuss how simplified micro-ecologies constructed using tools of micro and nanofabrication techniques offer some idea of how physical principles and analysis can address the issue of complex ecology dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. austin@Princeton.edu
authors.forename: Robert H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Austin
authors.forename: Chih-Kuan
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Tung
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lambert
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.forename: Xiuqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria; D001483:Base Sequence; D004463:Ecology; D006801:Humans; D008832:Microchemistry; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data