Microbiologist

A microbiologist is a scientist who works in the field of biology. They typically hold either a Bachelor of Science degree or Doctoral degree concentrating in microbiology. Microbiologists can be known under different names depending on the field of microbiology they specialize in:

• Bacteriologists - work in the field of bacteriology and study bacteria.


• Environmental Microbiologists - work in the field of environmental microbiology and study microbial processes in the environment.


• Food Microbiologists - work in the food industry and study pathogenic microorganisms that cause foodborne illness and spoilage.


• Industrial Microbiologists - generally work in field of biotechnology and study microorganisms that produce useful products.


• Medical Microbiologists - medical practitioners (doctors) who have chosen to specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of microbial diseases in patients.


• Mycologists - work in the field of mycology and study fungi.


• Protozoologists - work in the field of protozoology and study protists.


• Virologists - work in the field of virology and study viruses


• Microbial Epidemiologists - study the role of microorganisms in health and illness.
  
  

Structural

Schematic of typical animal cell depicting the various organelles and structures.
Main articles: Molecular biology, Cell biology, Genetics, and Developmental biology
Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level. This field overlaps with other areas of biology, particularly with genetics and biochemistry. Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interrelationship of DNA, RNA, and protein synthesis and learning how these interactions are regulated.
Cell biology studies the physiological properties of cells, as well as their behaviors, interactions, and environment. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level. Cell biology researches both single-celled organisms like bacteria and specialized cells in multicellular organisms like humans.
Understanding cell composition and how they function is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. Appreciating the similarities and differences between cell types is particularly important in the fields of cell and molecular biology. These fundamental similarities and differences provide a unifying theme, allowing the principles learned from studying one cell type to be extrapolated and generalized to other cell types.
Genetics is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. Genes encode the information necessary for synthesizing proteins, which in turn play a large role in influencing (though, in many instances, not completely determining) the final phenotype of the organism. In modern research, genetics provides important tools in the investigation of the function of a particular gene, or the analysis of genetic interactions. Within organisms, genetic information generally is carried in chromosomes, where it is represented in the chemical structure of particular DNA molecules.
Developmental biology studies the process by which organisms grow and develop. Originating in embryology, modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation, and "morphogenesis," which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs, and anatomy. Model organisms for developmental biology include the round worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the zebrafish Brachydanio rerio, the mouse Mus musculus, and the weed Arabidopsis thaliana.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism or Behaviourism, also called the learning perspective, is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors.The school of psychology maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observational correlates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling).
From early psychology in the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently and shared commonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements in psychology into the 20th century; but also differed from the mental philosophy of the Gestalt psychologists in critical ways.Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to experimental methods, and B.F. Skinner who conducted research on operant conditioning.
Versions
There is no classification generally agreed upon, but some titles given to the various branches of behaviorism include:

Classical: The behaviorism of Watson; the objective study of behavior; no mental life, no internal states; thought is covert speech.
Methodological: The objective study of third-person behavior; the data of psychology must be inter-subjectively verifiable; no theoretical prescriptions. It has been absorbed into general experimental and cognitive psychology.
Radical: Skinner's behaviorism; is considered radical since it expands behavioral principles to processes within the organism; in contrast to methodological behaviorism; not mechanistic or reductionist; hypothetical (mentalistic) internal states are not considered causes of behavior, phenomena must be observable at least to the individual experiencing them. Willard Van Orman Quine used many of radical behaviorism's ideas in his study of knowing and language.
Logical: Established by Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949).
Teleological: Post-Skinnerian, purposive, close to microeconomics.
Theoretical: Post-Skinnerian, accepts observable internal states ("within the skin" once meant "unobservable", but with modern technology we are not so constrained); dynamic, but eclectic in choice of theoretical structures, emphasizes parsimony.
Biological: Post-Skinnerian, centered on perceptual and motor modules of behavior, theory of behavior systems.
Inter behaviorism: Founded by J. R. Kantor before Skinner's writings and currently worked by L. Hayes; E. Ribes; and S. Bijou. centered in the inter behavior of organisms, field theory of behavior; emphasis on human behavior.

Behavior

Behavior or behaviour (see spelling differences) refers to the actions or reactions of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. Behavior can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary. In animals, behavior is controlled by the endocrine system and the nervous system. The complexity of the behavior of an organism is related to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms with complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to learn new responses and thus adjust their behavior. Human behavior (and that of other organisms and mechanisms) can be common, unusual, acceptable, or unacceptable. Humans evaluate the acceptability of behavior using social norms and regulate behavior by means of social control. In sociology, behavior is considered as having no meaning, being not directed at other people and thus is the most basic human action. Animal behavior is studied in comparative psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology and sociobiology.
Ronald J. Konopka and Seymour Benzer of Caltech were the first to establish the genetic basis of behavior, when they isolated three circadian rhythm mutants in Drosophila melanogaster which were later mapped to a single gene .

Ethology

Ethology (from Greek: ήθος, ethos, "custom"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a branch of zoology (not be confused with ethnology).
Although many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behavior through the centuries, the modern science of ethology is usually considered to have arisen as a discrete discipline with the work in the 1920s of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz. Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with strong ties to certain other disciplines — e.g., neuroanatomy, ecology, evolution. Ethologists are typically interested in a behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group and often study one type of behavior (e.g., aggression) in a number of unrelated animals.
The desire to understand the animal world has made ethology a rapidly growing field, and since the turn of the 21st century, many prior understandings related to diverse fields such as animal communication, personal symbolic name use, animal emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, have been revolutionized, as have new fields such as neuroethology.

Etymology
The term "ethology" is derived from the Greek word "èthos" (ήθος), meaning "character". Other words derived from the Greek word "ethos" include "ethics" and "ethical". The term was first popularized in English by the American myrmecologist William Morton Wheeler in 1902. (An earlier, slightly different sense of the term was proposed by John Stuart Mill in his 1843 System of Logic. He recommended the development of a new science, "ethology," whose purpose would be the explanation of individual and national differences in character, on the basis of associationistic psychology. This use of the word was never adopted.)