Biodiversity of terrestrial protozoa appears homogeneous across local and global spatial scales.

摘要: Summary Free-living microbes are by far the most abundant group of organisms in biosphere, yet estimates global species richness remain nebulous, and there is no consensus regarding likely geographical distribution species. Both uncertainties addressed suggestion that vast abundance may drive their ubiquitous random dispersal; for this would also make it relatively low. Here we test idea dispersal testate amoebae ciliates living soil. We analysed 150 soil samples collected from one-hectare grassland site at Sourhope Scotland, comparable published data 1500 worldwide. Following taxonomic revision removal synonyms, remained a total 186 taxa (91 95 ciliate) recorded both other places world. A fundamental pattern spatial was revealed rare. This probably arises dispersal, when localised population growth occurs, distributions become aggregated, as virtually all metazoan find evidence geographically-restricted protozoan morphospecies scales 4 m 2 , 10,000 or Species locally rare similarly on scale. Approximately one third diversity protozoa found but minimum figure, proportional to sampling effort, shown here.