Nina Wale works in the field of infectious disease evolution and ecology. In this mSphere of Influence article, she reflects on how the paper by Roller and Schmidt, "The physiology and ecological implications of efficient growth" (B. R. Roller and T. M. Schmidt, ISME J 9:1481-1487, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2014.235) broadened her thinking about how microbes acquire and allocate resources and, in so doing, set her research on pathogen virulence evolution in a new direction.
Keywords: evolution; microbial ecology; parasite; pathogen; resource; trait; virulence.