Short Abstract:

This roundtable aims to highlight how the rising reverence for microbes has been used, interpreted and abused by doctors, ecologists, politicians, and cooks.

Long Abstract:

Long assumed to be crucial sources of sickness and suffering, our tiniest co-travelers have built up better reputations across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Germ Theories of Disease are being replaced by Hygiene Hypotheses, which re-envision many of our microbial multitudes as natural, normal, and beneficial agents that can promote human and ecosystem health. Microbes help digest our foods or make them palatable; they also promote biodiversity and sustain global processes. Even the contagions responsible for pandemics can be useful for fighting other pathogens during syndemics. This roundtable aims to highlight how the rising reverence for microbes has been used, interpreted and abused by doctors, ecologists, politicians, and cooks. We will present some of our key questions and briefly offer our best answers to how our lives and landscapes have modified and been modified by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and Plasmodium, their carriers and vectors, especially ticks, mosquitoes, rodents and birds, and the environments they inhabit and co-create, including oceans, forests, soils, foods and human bodies.