In the natural setting, and within the human host, microbes seldom encounter conditions that are propitious for unrestricted growth. Rather, they must survive in environments where most of the time they are faced with limiting amounts of essential nutrients and stressful stimuli. The myriad of survival strategies that microorganisms have evolved to cope with starvation is reflected in the richness of diversity found in the microbial world. Our laboratory studies several of these microbial survival strategies. Two of the current projects are: the study of surface-associated microbial communities known as biofilms and the ways in interspecies interactions influence microbial development in communities. In addition, the laboratory is interested in bacterial genome evolution and is approaching this topic through comparative genomic studies of multiple isolates of the same species.