Personal - GI Tract . Boy, there's another one. Talk about microbial populations. You know a lot of times you'll hear about E. coli. Certainly, it's an important organism and unfortunately it's an important pathogen right now in the food industry. E. coli is in the intestines of each and every one of you. Any warm blooded animal will harbor E. coli.But E. coli is far outnumbered by the anaerobes by about 1000:1. So if I were doing a plating count of undiluted human waste, I certainly I would isolate E. coli from the sample. However if I diluted the same sample far out to yield a 10-100 millionth of the original sample, the E. coli would be diluted out, but I would still have all the anaerobes. At that dilution, I wouldn't be able to find E. coli, in fact. That's something to keep in mind regarding the populations of E. coli vs. anaerobes in the GI tract.
Personal - Skin . The skin surface. Staphylococcus, and Propionibacterium bacteria are common inhabitants of your skin's surface. This particular creature, the one called Propionibacterium acne. Guess what it's involved with? Acne. This one is an anaerobe but it grows on your skin. Again, something to think about in the ecological interaction of these populations.
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