Biogeographic patterns in ocean microbes emerge in a neutral agent-based model

Abstract

Patterns of life in the ocean wave: The open ocean is not uniform. The seas teem with unseen life that has evolved distinctive patterns of species distribution, much as the land-bound world contains a spectrum of biological provinces. Taking data from genome studies, Hellweger et al. devised a model showing how marine bacteria diversified throughout the world's oceans into stable geographic provinces independently of natural selection (see the Perspective by Giovannoni and Nemergut). All that is needed to create these distributions are mutations and ocean currents. Science , this issue p. 1346 ; see also p. 1246