David S. Thaler (davidsthaler@gmail.com) researches and teaches genetics, microbiology and biotechnology at the Biozentrum, Center for Molecular Life Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland. He has a broad interest in biological, technological, educational potentials. Recent projects have encompassed visual processing speed, genetic variation and evolution, precision public health, and genetic resources for food and agriculture. In addition, he teaches an introductory course on experimental molecular biology. After decades of collaboration with members of PHE, David formally joined as a Guest Investigator in 2019.
Selected publications of David Thaler associated with The Rockefeller University:
Jesse H. Ausubel and David S. Thaler. Plant and Animal Diversity Is Declining, But What About Microbial Diversity?. RealClear Science 11 May 2021
David S Thaler. Is global microbial biodiversity increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 2021
David S. Thaler and Thomas Sakmar BMC Infectious Diseases 21, Article #601 (2021) ‘Archiving time series sewage samples as biological records of built environments.”
David S Thaler, Inn Actes du Colloque International d’Amboise: Leonardo de Vinci, Anatomiste. Pionnier de l’Anatomie comparée, de la Biomécanique, de la Bionique et de la Physiognomonie. Ed. Henry de Lumley, CNRS editions, Paris. “Evidence for extraordinary visual acuity in Leonardo’s comment on a dragonfly,” and “Sfumato in Leonardo’s portraits: Optical and psychophysical mechanisms”, 2020.
MY Stoeckle, DS Thaler. Why Should Mitochondria Define Species? (PDF). Human Evolution 33 (1-2): 1-30 2018
DS Thaler, MY Stoeckle. Bridging two scholarly islands enriches both: COI DNA barcodes for species identification versus human mitochondrial variation for the study of migrations and pathologies. Ecology and Evolution 6 (19): 6824–6835 2016
MY Stoeckle, DS Thaler. DNA Barcoding Works in Practice but Not in (Neutral) Theory. Plos One 9 (7): e100755 2014