I have had a compound microscopic for a little over a year and many species I end up finding have a cosmopolitan distribution, why is this? I’m sorry if this is a stupid question.

Did no-one ever tell you that there is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers.

Or stupid people that don’t ever ask questions.

I’ve also wondered that too, but no idea @blastcat

These papers are worth reading as they directly addresses this issue: Hedlund & Staley 2004 Microbial Endemism and Biogeography Fenchel 2005 Cosmopolitan microbes and their ‘cryptic’ species Logares 2006 Does the global microbiota consist of a few cosmopolitan species? There are quite a few p…

here is a book … Biogeography of Microscopic Organisms (cambridge.org)

I hope that genetic approach will bust this myth about widespread cosmopolitan species as it happened in small flatworm Giratrix hermaphroditus → Is ‘everything everywhere’? Unprecedented cryptic diversity in the cosmopolitan flatworm Gyratrix hermaphroditus https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11…

Thanks, Earthknight, Cooperj, and Sumie-dh for providing us a starting point on learning more about this interesting topic.

Do most microscopic organisms have a cosmopolitan distribution, if so, why?

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Do most microscopic organisms have a cosmopolitan distribution, if so, why?

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