Local-global overlap in diversity informs mechanisms of bacterial biogeography.

ABSTRACT: Spatial variation in environmental conditions and barriers to organism movement are thought to be important factors for generating endemic species, thus enhancing global diversity. Recent microbial ecology research suggested that the entire diversity of bacteria in the global oceans could be recovered at a single site, thus inferring a lack of bacterial endemism. We argue this is not the case in the global ocean, but might be in other bacterial ecosystems with higher dispersal rates and lower global diversity, like the human gut. We quantified the degree to which local and global bacterial diversity overlap in a diverse set of ecosystems. Upon comparison of observed local-global diversity overlap with predictions from a neutral biogeography model, human-associated microbiomes (gut, skin, m

SUBMITTER: Livermore JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4611505 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature