Are there species smaller than 1 mm?

Authored by Alan J McKane, Axel G Rossberg, Tim Rogers

Date Published: 2013

DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1248

Sponsors: European Union United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

The rapid advance in genetic sequencing technologies has provided an unprecedented amount of data on the biodiversity of meiofauna. It was hoped that these data would allow the identification and counting of species, distinguished as tight clusters of similar genomes. Surprisingly, this appears not to be the case. Here, we begin a theoretical discussion of this phenomenon, drawing on an individual-based ecological model to inform our arguments. The determining factor in the emergence (or not) of distinguishable genetic clusters in the model is the product of population size with mutation rate-a measure of the adaptability of the population as a whole. This result suggests that indeed one should not expect to observe clearly distinguishable species groupings in data gathered from ultrasequencing of meiofauna.

Tags

Evolution Diversity noise sympatric speciation Rates Origin Population-size