Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 18 September 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5947, pp. 1539 - 1541
DOI: 10.1126/science.1174159
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Controls on Diatom Biogeography in the Ocean

Pedro Cermeño1,*,{dagger} and Paul G. Falkowski1,2,*

The extent to which the spatial distribution of marine planktonic microbes is controlled by local environmental selection or dispersal is poorly understood. Our ability to separate the effects of these two biogeographic controls is limited by the enormous environmental variability both in space and through time. To circumvent this limitation, we analyzed fossil diatom assemblages over the past ~1.5 million years from the world oceans and show that these eukaryotic microbes are not limited by dispersal. The lack of dispersal limitation in marine diatoms suggests that the biodiversity at the microbial level fundamentally differs from that of macroscopic animals and plants for which geographic isolation is a common component of speciation.

1 Environmental Biophysics and Molecular Ecology Program, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, 71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
2 Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Rutgers University, 610 Taylor Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.

{dagger} Present address: Departamento de Ecología y Biología Animal, Universidad de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pedro{at}uvigo.es (P.C.); falko{at}marine.rutgers.edu (P.G.F.)

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Seeing the Big Picture on Microbe Distribution.
D. J. Patterson (2009)
Science 325, 1506-1507
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)