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Phone: (612) 625-5700
Fax: (612) 624-6777
Email: wiggins@umn.edu

University of Minnesota
Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior
100 Ecology Building
1987 Upper Buford Circle
St. Paul, MN 55108

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Michael Travisano

Associate Professor, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1993

Contact Information

Phone: 612-626-6201
Fax: 612-624-6777
E-mail: travisan@umn.edu

Graduate Faculty Memberships

Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Research Interests

Ecological and evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary genetics, microbial ecology and evolution

Statement

My long-term research goals are in understanding the causes of biological diversity and complexity. While natural selection is the ultimate cause for both, that level of explanation is not sufficient to understand how the myriad forms of life have come to exist. My research program is essentially a series of studies of increasingly more complicated biological systems. By understanding more simple systems, we then work toward understanding more complicated, and realistic, biological systems. My first projects were with a single species of free-living bacteria, one of the simplest living systems that have biological complexity. Since those first experiments, my work has branched out to include simple eukaryotes, predator-prey interactions, and microbial communities, all of which was possible because of the earlier work.

Selected Publications

Waterland, RA, Travisano, M, Tahiliani, KG. in press. Diet-induced hypermethylation at agouti viable yellow is not inherited transgenerationally through the female. FASEB.

Spencer CC, Bertrand M, Travisano M, Doebeli M. 2007. Adaptive diversification in genes that regulate resource use in Escherichia coli. PLoS Genetics 3:e15

Buckling A, Brockhurst MA, Travisano M, Rainey PB. 2007. Experimental adaptation to high and low quality environments under different scales of temporal variation. J Evol Biol 20:296-300.

Zhang H, and Travisano M. 2006. Experimental studies on the interaction among correlated traits. In Artificial Life X, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Artificial Life.

Tyerman J, Havard N, Saxer G, Travisano M, Doebeli M. 2005. Unparallel diversification in bacterial microcosms. Proc Biol Sci 272:1393-1398.

Greig D, Travisano M. 2004. The Prisoner's Dilemma and polymorphism in yeast SUC genes. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 271 Suppl 3:S25-6.

Friesen ML, Saxer G, Travisano M, Doebeli M. 2004. Experimental evidence for sympatric ecological diversification due to frequency-dependent competition in Escherichia coli. Evolution 58:245-60.

Travisano M, Velicer GJ. 2004. Strategies of microbial cheater control. Trends Microbiol. 12:72-8.

Greig D, Louis EJ, Borts RH, Travisano M. 2002. Hybrid speciation in experimental populations of yeast. Science 298:1773-5.

Travisano M. and Rainey PB. 2000. Studies of adaptive radiation using model microbial systems. American Naturalist 156: S35-S44.

Rainey PB, Travisano M. 1998. Adaptive radiation in a heterogeneous environment. Nature 394:69-72.

Travisano M, Mongold JA, Bennett AF, Lenski RE. 1995. Experimental tests of the roles of adaptation, chance, and history in evolution. Science 267:87-90.

Lenski RE, Travisano M. 1994. Dynamics of adaptation and diversification: a 10,000-generation experiment with bacterial populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 91:6808-14.