Etymology

microbial clock

Today it means: The predictable, time-dependent succession of microbial communities during the postmortem decomposition of a body, used to estimate the postmortem interval. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

Coined by the microbial ecologist and evolutionary biologist Jessica Metcalf c. 2010.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.