Ubiquitous dispersal of microbial species

The biosphere supports astronomical numbers of free-living microorganisms that belong to an indeterminate number of species. One view 1 , 2 , 3 is that the abundance of microorganisms drives their dispersal, making them ubiquitous and resulting in a moderate global richness of species. But ubiquity...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1999-08, Vol.400 (6747), p.828-828
Main Authors: Finlay, Bland J., Clarke, Ken J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biosphere
Cysts
Design
Freshwater
Humanities and Social Sciences
Microorganisms
Motor ability
multidisciplinary
Paraphysomonas
Population growth
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
scientific-correspondence
Sediments
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Summary:The biosphere supports astronomical numbers of free-living microorganisms that belong to an indeterminate number of species. One view 1 , 2 , 3 is that the abundance of microorganisms drives their dispersal, making them ubiquitous and resulting in a moderate global richness of species. But ubiquity is hard to demonstrate, not only because active species have a rapid turnover, but also because most species in a habitat at any moment in time are relatively rare or in some cryptic state 4 . Here we use microbes that leave traces of their recent population growth in the form of siliceous scale structures to show that all species in the chrysomonad flagellate genus Paraphysomonas are probably ubiquitous.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/23616