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I would like to thank my adviser Sarah Hobbie for her enthusiasm, patience, and support of both me and my project, even as it drifted farther and farther from her area of research. Thanks also to Chris Henry, for taking up the role of adviser as my project progressed and for helping me to develop my knowledge and skills in metabolic modeling. Thanks to Peter Minchin (University of Illinois Edwardsville) for statistical advice and discussions of how to approach comparisons of large genomic datasets that proved crucial to my dissertation work. Thanks to my committee, Mike Travisano, Tom Schmidt (University of Michigan), and Peter Reich, for being generous with their time, their wise feedback, and their gentle corrections. And, mostly, for challenging me to think more deeply and broadly about the work I was doing, its context, and its relevance. With your help, I was able to expand the scope of my research and gain a new perspective on ways to examine organisms ’ interactions with their environment. My graduate experience was much richer for this and I am a better researcher for your efforts. I am also thankful to many faculty and researchers at LSU for helping me develop the foundation on which this dissertation work was built. Many thanks to Loretta Battaglia (now at Southern Illinois Carbondale) for my trial by fire induction into the world of research. Your strong spirit and determination to coax (and pry when necessary) my thoughts and ideas into the open helped me to find my intellectual voice and take th