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Unseen Diversity: The World of Bacteria
Bacteria are the most overlooked organisms on your nature walk. You see birds, trees, and wildflowers. You may even examine fungi, rock formations, mosses, lichens, nests, tracks, and insects. However, it is likely that you are not seeing bacteria even though you may know they are there in countless numbers, far outnumbering the other organisms, and that their influence on the environment is vast and profound.Professor Betsey Dexter Dyer of Wheaton College examines the role of bacteria as major players in Earth's biodiversity. In the course of these fascinating lectures, Professor Dyer delves into the history of microbiology, the four billion year history of bacteria and archaea as the dominant organisms on Earth, and the place of pathogens in the greater context of the bacterial world. This course serves as both a field guide for curious naturalists and a friendly introduction to the world of bacteria and archaea.
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First published March 28, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 21, 2017
All told, not a great lecture, but not bad. It's worth listening to if you know less than I did going in. If you know more, this is probably a waste of your time.
Update: I keep finding myself referring back to this & thinking of what I learned. I'm not sure what put me off so badly, but I obviously got a lot more out of it than I realized at first, so I'm bumping it up a star. (end update)
My last biology course was 40 years ago, so I started this with a lot of questions. I've kept up with this branch of science only through occasional articles & general reading. A lot has changed since my school days. I think we only had the plant & animal kingdoms (no domains) in our text books, but were told about higher/other classifications. Bacteria were all lumped in one group at that time (possibly a domain of their own) but there has been so many changes over the years that I can't really recall. Domains (sometimes part of empires) have been added (maybe) for eukaryotes, bacteria, archaea, & (possibly) viruses. I recently read an article about 7 or 8 domains & another in which the 'Tree of Life' was scrapped for some sort of circular thing that really confused me.
Bacteria has been split into (eu)bacteria & archaea. I know they're the largest & most diverse group of organisms & make up 90% of the cells in my body, 10% of my body weight. Are they in symbiosis with me or am I just a walking container for them? Dyer asks this, too. Good question & she attempts to give us the microbiological point of view. In any case, they are super important. I've run across some tantalizing hints as to why they were split, but never fully understood why. Archaea don't have a nucleus, where do they fit in? Are they part of that 90%? Some bacteria have a nucleus, but others don't? They promiscuously share DNA in unique ways, so how does anyone pin them down enough to stick them in the Tree of Life at all?
I'd hoped that this series of 14 lectures (about 30 minutes each) from 2008 would help answer my questions, but the first half didn't teach me anything new. That's pitiful given my level of ignorance & this is supposed to be a college level course. Worse, she's repetitive. Her lectures go over a point, stray a bit (which I don't mind) & then circle back to repeat the same point before making a bit of headway & circling yet again. If this was a walk, she'd take an hour to gain a few feet & she'd miss several steps somehow, too. I think she got confused over whether this was an introductory course to bacteria or her field guide which this is based on. The first half didn't really work as either.
She put things in a good perspective for an early freshman high school class (9th grade, 15 year old kids in the US). I find it hard to believe this is supposed to be a college lecture. I kept listening because a refresher on all the weird names (& how they're pronounced!) didn't hurt me at all & there was just enough meat to hold my interest. My attention wandered at times, but picking back up on Koch's postulates, some other history, & a few other things was good. Basic science I haven't thought about in far too long. I hadn't realized that they've pushed the emergence of bacteria back to 4 billion years. Impressive.
In lecture #8, The Graham Positives, or #9, The Graham Positives In The Soil, she finally got into territory somewhat new to me. She gets into extreme bacteria, how they eat & other interesting things like the nodules on legumes which contain hemoglobin, but it's used to keep oxygen out of the way of their important work. How cool! I hadn't realized legumes weren't a family of plants, but are a grouped simply because they host nitrogen-fixing bacteria colonies. Some bacteria eat nitrogen or sulfur molecules & pass them along to others. This could be what we'll find on other planets or the moons of the gas giants! The blue-green bacteria take CO2 & water to make sugars. Some became pieces of more complex cells & are now chloroplasts, similar to the way our cells got mitochondria. This is good stuff, what I was looking for.
She makes a great point on just how rare pathogens are & uses pathogen cards she bought to do so. Neat idea. There are only about 50 bacterial pathogen cards & 23 viral ones. Comparatively tiny numbers & she discusses jumping genes along with the promiscuity of viral & bacterial genes. Fascinating. 1/3 of our DNA is viral?!!! I hadn't realized they all didn't have a protein shell & she says we're really not sure how to define a virus. We don't really have the vocabulary, so some put them in a group by themselves while others are arguing they belong to the group they're most likely associated with since they're just bits of DNA &/0r RNA. It's hard to imagine just how new so much of this is. Great points on how/why we tend to study pathogens more & how that skews our views.
She blew it in a couple of places; got to something really interesting & then left me hanging. For instance, she mentions how pathogens are usually relatively out of sync with new species from an evolutionary perspective, such as the Black Plague. Then she mentions spirochetes & the ability of 2 to morph & hide, specifically HIV & Lyme's disease, saying that the latter affects humans & dogs. She doesn't mention that it also affects all mammals & birds. I think of birds as the current incarnation of dinosaurs. I'd be really curious if Lyme's infects reptiles & amphibians & how that squares with her earlier remarks on specificity.
Antibiotic Resistance: Bacteria & fungi have it naturally. They also create anti-antibiotic resistance naturally. When she FINALLY gets around to mentioning that resistance is often/usually lost once the antibiotic is gone (because bacteria that carry around too much genetic material tend not to compete as well) she uses a great example of packing for vacation. Hospitals & factory farming are the biggest, worst breeding ground for antibiotic resistance & if we can fix them, we can probably stop a lot of the current issues. (Uh oh! Maybe not. On 2Feb2017, I read this article Antibiotics can Stimulate Bacteria Growth. Scary!)
I was disappointed to find that www.modernscholar.com no longer exists, so I couldn't get the free study guide from there using the password 1121bdd that Recorded Books assured me was available. I didn't see anything for it on their or the library's web site, either. I would have used it to list the chapters here & keep notes. If anyone knows where I can find a copy, please let me know.
Update: I keep finding myself referring back to this & thinking of what I learned. I'm not sure what put me off so badly, but I obviously got a lot more out of it than I realized at first, so I'm bumping it up a star. (end update)
My last biology course was 40 years ago, so I started this with a lot of questions. I've kept up with this branch of science only through occasional articles & general reading. A lot has changed since my school days. I think we only had the plant & animal kingdoms (no domains) in our text books, but were told about higher/other classifications. Bacteria were all lumped in one group at that time (possibly a domain of their own) but there has been so many changes over the years that I can't really recall. Domains (sometimes part of empires) have been added (maybe) for eukaryotes, bacteria, archaea, & (possibly) viruses. I recently read an article about 7 or 8 domains & another in which the 'Tree of Life' was scrapped for some sort of circular thing that really confused me.
Bacteria has been split into (eu)bacteria & archaea. I know they're the largest & most diverse group of organisms & make up 90% of the cells in my body, 10% of my body weight. Are they in symbiosis with me or am I just a walking container for them? Dyer asks this, too. Good question & she attempts to give us the microbiological point of view. In any case, they are super important. I've run across some tantalizing hints as to why they were split, but never fully understood why. Archaea don't have a nucleus, where do they fit in? Are they part of that 90%? Some bacteria have a nucleus, but others don't? They promiscuously share DNA in unique ways, so how does anyone pin them down enough to stick them in the Tree of Life at all?
I'd hoped that this series of 14 lectures (about 30 minutes each) from 2008 would help answer my questions, but the first half didn't teach me anything new. That's pitiful given my level of ignorance & this is supposed to be a college level course. Worse, she's repetitive. Her lectures go over a point, stray a bit (which I don't mind) & then circle back to repeat the same point before making a bit of headway & circling yet again. If this was a walk, she'd take an hour to gain a few feet & she'd miss several steps somehow, too. I think she got confused over whether this was an introductory course to bacteria or her field guide which this is based on. The first half didn't really work as either.
She put things in a good perspective for an early freshman high school class (9th grade, 15 year old kids in the US). I find it hard to believe this is supposed to be a college lecture. I kept listening because a refresher on all the weird names (& how they're pronounced!) didn't hurt me at all & there was just enough meat to hold my interest. My attention wandered at times, but picking back up on Koch's postulates, some other history, & a few other things was good. Basic science I haven't thought about in far too long. I hadn't realized that they've pushed the emergence of bacteria back to 4 billion years. Impressive.
In lecture #8, The Graham Positives, or #9, The Graham Positives In The Soil, she finally got into territory somewhat new to me. She gets into extreme bacteria, how they eat & other interesting things like the nodules on legumes which contain hemoglobin, but it's used to keep oxygen out of the way of their important work. How cool! I hadn't realized legumes weren't a family of plants, but are a grouped simply because they host nitrogen-fixing bacteria colonies. Some bacteria eat nitrogen or sulfur molecules & pass them along to others. This could be what we'll find on other planets or the moons of the gas giants! The blue-green bacteria take CO2 & water to make sugars. Some became pieces of more complex cells & are now chloroplasts, similar to the way our cells got mitochondria. This is good stuff, what I was looking for.
She makes a great point on just how rare pathogens are & uses pathogen cards she bought to do so. Neat idea. There are only about 50 bacterial pathogen cards & 23 viral ones. Comparatively tiny numbers & she discusses jumping genes along with the promiscuity of viral & bacterial genes. Fascinating. 1/3 of our DNA is viral?!!! I hadn't realized they all didn't have a protein shell & she says we're really not sure how to define a virus. We don't really have the vocabulary, so some put them in a group by themselves while others are arguing they belong to the group they're most likely associated with since they're just bits of DNA &/0r RNA. It's hard to imagine just how new so much of this is. Great points on how/why we tend to study pathogens more & how that skews our views.
She blew it in a couple of places; got to something really interesting & then left me hanging. For instance, she mentions how pathogens are usually relatively out of sync with new species from an evolutionary perspective, such as the Black Plague. Then she mentions spirochetes & the ability of 2 to morph & hide, specifically HIV & Lyme's disease, saying that the latter affects humans & dogs. She doesn't mention that it also affects all mammals & birds. I think of birds as the current incarnation of dinosaurs. I'd be really curious if Lyme's infects reptiles & amphibians & how that squares with her earlier remarks on specificity.
Antibiotic Resistance: Bacteria & fungi have it naturally. They also create anti-antibiotic resistance naturally. When she FINALLY gets around to mentioning that resistance is often/usually lost once the antibiotic is gone (because bacteria that carry around too much genetic material tend not to compete as well) she uses a great example of packing for vacation. Hospitals & factory farming are the biggest, worst breeding ground for antibiotic resistance & if we can fix them, we can probably stop a lot of the current issues. (Uh oh! Maybe not. On 2Feb2017, I read this article Antibiotics can Stimulate Bacteria Growth. Scary!)
I was disappointed to find that www.modernscholar.com no longer exists, so I couldn't get the free study guide from there using the password 1121bdd that Recorded Books assured me was available. I didn't see anything for it on their or the library's web site, either. I would have used it to list the chapters here & keep notes. If anyone knows where I can find a copy, please let me know.
April 23, 2011
I picked this up on one of Audible's super sales (I think I got it for $5) and I absolutely loved it. Yes, I'm a science geek, and your average person is not going to appreciate this but, if you're at all curious about microbes and the history of science, I can assure you this is an excellent course. The professor obviously loves her subject and communicates well. It is aimed at the curious, not the wanna-be microbiologist so it's not TOO technical.
August 13, 2011
Amazon review:
Bacteria are the most overlooked organisms on your nature walk. You see birds, trees, and wildflowers. You may even examine fungi, rock formations, mosses, lichens, nests, tracks, and insects. However, it is likely that you are not seeing bacteria even though you may know they are there in countless numbers, far outnumbering the other organisms, and that their influence on the environment is vast and profound.Professor Betsey Dexter Dyer of Wheaton College examines the role of bacteria as major players in Earth's biodiversity. In the course of these fascinating lectures, Professor Dyer delves into the history of microbiology, the four billion year history of bacteria and archaea as the dominant organisms on Earth, and the place of pathogens in the greater context of the bacterial world. This course serves as both a field guide for curious naturalists and a friendly introduction to the world of bacteria and archaea.
Bacteria are the most overlooked organisms on your nature walk. You see birds, trees, and wildflowers. You may even examine fungi, rock formations, mosses, lichens, nests, tracks, and insects. However, it is likely that you are not seeing bacteria even though you may know they are there in countless numbers, far outnumbering the other organisms, and that their influence on the environment is vast and profound.Professor Betsey Dexter Dyer of Wheaton College examines the role of bacteria as major players in Earth's biodiversity. In the course of these fascinating lectures, Professor Dyer delves into the history of microbiology, the four billion year history of bacteria and archaea as the dominant organisms on Earth, and the place of pathogens in the greater context of the bacterial world. This course serves as both a field guide for curious naturalists and a friendly introduction to the world of bacteria and archaea.
decided-not-to-continue
February 6, 2017Added 2/5/17. (Release Date:10-31-08 - Publisher: Recorded Books )
This book gets more fascinating with every lecture! The author provides plenty of back-up information. She seems to know how to clarify difficult concepts, giving good examples and widening one's knowledge in every direction.
See more at audible.com: http://www.audible.com/pd/Science-Tec...
This book gets more fascinating with every lecture! The author provides plenty of back-up information. She seems to know how to clarify difficult concepts, giving good examples and widening one's knowledge in every direction.
See more at audible.com: http://www.audible.com/pd/Science-Tec...
December 20, 2009
really enjoyable survey of bacteria.
Learned a bunch of interesting stuff, and while there was material I already knew, put in context of the whole course it really emphasized the amazing role bacteria plays in the world. the amount of activities that bacteria are responsible for that allow for life as we know it to exist is staggering.
Learned a bunch of interesting stuff, and while there was material I already knew, put in context of the whole course it really emphasized the amazing role bacteria plays in the world. the amount of activities that bacteria are responsible for that allow for life as we know it to exist is staggering.
March 26, 2020
Unseen diversity is a passionate redaction about all microorganisms. I was looking forwards to reading it as a medical doctor, and in that respect I was a bit disappointed, as pathogens are mentioned only briefly. THIS BOOK IS A FIELD GUIDE TO MICROBIOLOGY, and as so, it provided me with a very interesting point of view on the complete variety of bacteria, including commensal flora, cyanobacteria, extremophiles and sulfur-based organisms. If you are interested in Microbiology - and especially Bacteriology, give it a go!
April 18, 2024
I’m a biologist — not a bacteriologist — and can’t say that I learned a lot that was new, simply because part of my job is to understand the basics of what she presents. BUT I enjoyed every minute of this. She has an engaging way of organising and explaining the material that helps retention, and does a lot to encourage listeners to see the world around them as richer and more beautiful. Well done Dr Dyer!
September 18, 2023
Riveting! I read this as research for a book I'm writing and thought it might be pure drudgery except for answers to the specific questions I had, however! However, these 14 lectures by Dyer who holds multiple PhD's is fantastic for the lay person such as I! I understood everything she said and learned so much.
June 22, 2018
great book very contemporary. Many science books have outdated information. But this was great.
April 9, 2021
Absolutely fascinating introduction to this topic.
July 7, 2017
Extremely fascinating throughout. Did you know 10% of our body weight is bacteria?
I've been boring my family with bacteria and biome facts now for weeks. ...I don't think that has enticed any of them to read it, though.
I've been boring my family with bacteria and biome facts now for weeks. ...I don't think that has enticed any of them to read it, though.
December 22, 2015
This was interesting but frustratingly incomplete. I learned a lot about bacterial metabolism, but only learned about, say, one mode of bacterial locomotion. This was based so much on the author's 'field guide' to bacteria, and as a result I learned an outsized amount about how to recognize certain types of bacteria by their appearance and texture, but little about what life is *like* for a bacterium or the kinds of structures and organelles they possess. I wanted to know more *about* bacteria, not learn how to spot certain types. This taught me far more than I already know on the topic, but I leave it feeling frustratingly uninformed on the things I had most hoped to learn on the topic.
November 26, 2009
This 14-lecture course provides an introduction to bacteria, explaining how many bacteria are all around us and inside us, and explaining why the vast majority of bacteria are harmless and not pathogenic. Given the recent "anti-bacteria" craze, it's a useful attitude correction. Betsey Dexter Dyer uses analogies well and simplifies the subject without dumbing it down. It seems to be a companion to her book A Field Guide to Bacteria.
June 16, 2015
If, like me, you took high school biology before DNA sequencing became standard practice then just about everything you learned is obsolete. This is a great basic overview of the 'new' microbiology. Her enthusiasm is wonderful, and slight digressions very colorful and enriching, adding to the enjoyment. I got this on a whim from an Audible sale but it has been one of my very favorite listens of the past few years. Fascinating and fun!
March 3, 2009
This lecture is very remedial. Anyone who has taken a high school biology class will learn very little from it. The author is redundant, and the pace of the lecture is teasingly slow. However, if you want to learn how to identify bacteria by their field marks, it may be worth a listen. Some of the digressions in the lecture are comically out of place, such as the art history of Johannes Vermeer.
December 27, 2011
Excellent lecture series on bacteria. I have a much greater appreciation and understanding of bacteria because of this. She talks about the history of microbiology and discusses the many uses of bacteria and the effects that they have on our daily lives. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about bacteria.
March 24, 2025
They're everywhere!!! And even if we already knew that, Dyer is able to convey her enthusiasm for the diversity and ubiquity of bacteria quite effectively. She puts these lectures forth as a "field guide", making the microscopic world more apparent to those willing to observe.
October 8, 2015
I loved this book!!!! My favorite: in the forest is a lump of rotting waste material, bacteria surround it and emit chemicals that keep other kinds of bacteria away. I vowed I would be a more evolved being that that.
November 26, 2013
Bacteriology 101
April 6, 2015
The basic science is high school biology. But the trivia about bacteria was quite interesting. I'll be looking for bacteria field marks on my next hike.
May 31, 2015
Nice survey of the field of bacterial zoology.
February 6, 2010
changed the way I view the world
January 13, 2016
Very informative and sight-changing!
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews