Jeff Smith has recently added Dictyostelium discoideum the the social microbes he studies. He has tackled questions such as how do antibiotic resistance plasmids evolve, how do we quantitatively test social evolution theory with real microbial data and what traits are responsible for social competition among Myxococcus (bacteria), and how do those traits evolve. After receiving his BS in Physics from Rice Univeristy he went on to get his PhD in Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution from Emory University in 2006. His first postdoc was with Greg Velicer where jeff studied Myxococcus and social evolution. One of the papers he published from that time was an influential generalization of Hamilton’s rule. In 2010, he returned to Rice University to work with Dictyostelium discoideum in the Strassmann/Queller lab to study the ecological and biological determinants of social structure using D. discoideum as his study organism. This work has continued at Wash U.. In his spare time, you can catch him writing about his favorite research topic at: http://matryoshka.org/
Publications
smith j, Van Dyken JD & Velicer GJ (Submitted) Non-adaptive processes can create the appearance of facultative cheating in microbes.
smith j & Velicer GJ (Submitted) Facultative social exploitation among Myxococcus bacteria indirectly caused by evolution in an alternative environment.
smith j (2012) Tragedy of the commons among antibiotic resistance plasmids. Evolution
Smith J (2007) A gene’s-eye view of symbiont transmission. American Naturalist 170: 542–550.
Nikonowicz EP & Smith JS (1999) NMR spectroscopic investigations of phosphorothioate containing RNAs. Phosphorus, Sulfur, and Silicon and the Related Elements 146: 305–308.
The Queller/Strassmann Lab 