Global Habitat Suitability and Ecological Niche Separation in the Phylum Placozoa.

ABSTRACT: The enigmatic placozoans, which hold a key position in the metazoan Tree of Life, have attracted substantial attention in many areas of biological and biomedical research. While placozoans have become an emerging model system, their ecology and particularly biogeography remain widely unknown. In this study, we use modelling approaches to explore habitat preferences, and distribution pattern of the placozoans phylum. We provide hypotheses for discrete ecological niche separation between genetic placozoan lineages, which may also help to understand biogeography patterns in other small marine invertebrates. We, here, used maximum entropy modelling to predict placozoan distribution using 20 environmental grids of 9.2 km2 resolution. In addition, we used recently developed metrics of niche over

SUBMITTER: Paknia O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4651326 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature