Continental-Scale Gene Flow Prevents Allopatric Divergence of Pelagic Freshwater Bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Allopatric divergence is one of the principal mechanisms for speciation of macro-organisms. Microbes by comparison are assumed to disperse more freely and to be less limited by dispersal barriers. However, thermophilic prokaryotes restricted to geothermal springs have shown clear signals of geographic isolation, but robust studies on this topic for microbes with less strict habitat requirements are scarce. Furthermore, it has only recently been recognized that homologous recombination among conspecific individuals provides species coherence in a wide range of prokaryotes. Recombination barriers thus may define prokaryotic species boundaries, yet, the extent to which geographic distance between populations gives rise to such barriers is an open question. Here, we investigated gene flow and

SUBMITTER: Hoetzinger M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7936036 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature