Abstract
Soil micro-organisms drive the global carbon and nutrient cycles that underlie essential ecosystem functions. Yet, we are only beginning to grasp the drivers of terrestrial microbial diversity and biogeography, which presents a substantial barrier to understanding community dynamics and ecosystem functioning. This is especially true for soil protists, which despite their functional significance have received comparatively less interest than their bacterial counterparts. Here, we investigate the diversification of Pinnularia borealis, a rare biosphere soil diatom species complex, using a global sampling of >800 strains. We document unprecedented high levels of species-diversity, reflecting a global radiation since the Eocene/Oligocene global cooling. Our analyses suggest diversification was largely driven by colonization of novel geographic areas and subsequent evolution in isolation. These results illuminate our understanding of how protist diversity, biogeographical patterns, and members of the rare biosphere are generated, and suggest allopatric speciation to be a powerful mechanism for diversification of micro-organisms.
Highlights
Soil micro-organisms drive the global carbon and nutrient cycles that underlie essential ecosystem functions
Patterns of past diversification and historical biogeography suggest that diversification is predominantly driven by colonization of novel geographic areas and subsequent evolution in isolation
Based on the results of our study, two key findings emerge: (i) P. borealis shows extraordinarily high species-level diversity, most likely caused by elevated diversification rates, and (ii) diversification is predominantly driven by colonization of novel geographic areas and subsequent evolution in isolation
Summary
Soil micro-organisms drive the global carbon and nutrient cycles that underlie essential ecosystem functions. Despite recent advances in our understanding of microbial ecology, the nature and drivers of microbial biogeographic patterns and diversification, and how they differ between different groups of micro-organisms, remain poorly resolved, especially for members of the rare biosphere[7], and taxa inhabiting terrestrial environments[9]. This is in part due to a lack of globalscale molecular phylogenetic studies of relatively young clades. Members of the complex are recognizable at low magnifications in light microscopy, can survive prolonged periods in suboptimal conditions including sampling recipients, and they are generally slow growers, they are easy to maintain in culture[17]
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