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MBE Advance Access originally published online on August 24, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2006 23(1):23-29; doi:10.1093/molbev/msj001
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Research Article

Global Dispersal and Ancient Cryptic Species in the Smallest Marine Eukaryotes

Jan Slapeta, Purificación López-García and David Moreira

Unité d'Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, UMR CNRS 8079, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay Cedex, France

E-mail: david.moreira{at}ese.u-psud.fr.

Small eukaryotic species (<1 mm) are thought to behave as prokaryotes in that, lacking geographical barriers to their dispersal due to their tiny size, they are ubiquitous. Accordingly, the absence of geographical insulation would imply the existence of a relatively small number of microeukaryotic species. To test these ideas, we sequenced and compared several nuclear, mitochondrial, and chloroplast genes from the isolates of a marine picoeukaryotic alga (~2 µm), Micromonas pusilla, collected worldwide. Independent and combined phylogenetic analyses demonstrate that this traditional single morphospecies actually comprises several independent lineages, some of which are shown to be ubiquitous in oceans. However, while some lineages group closely related strains, others form distant clusters, revealing the existence of cryptic species. Moreover, molecular dating using a relaxed clock suggests that their first diversification may have started as early as during the Late Cretaceous (~65 MYA), implying that "M. pusilla" is the oldest group of cryptic species known to date. Our results illustrate that global dispersal of a picoeukaryote is possible in oceans, but this does not imply a reduced species number. On the contrary, we show that the morphospecies concept is untenable because it overlooks a large genetic and species diversity and may lead to incorrect biological assumptions.

Key Words: multilocus genotyping • microbial speciation • biogeography • ubiquity • molecular dating


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