Large and small distribution areas

[Curtis Clark]

At 09:33 2002.09.06, Doug Yanega wrote:
>Do myxomycetes and tardigardes have low habitat specificity and
>easily-dispersed wind-blown life stages? If so, they fit the pattern.

Myxomycetes have "easily-dispersed wind-blown life stages": wind-borne
meiospores. My guess from my incomplete knowledge of the literature and
personal experience is that they partition habitats, but that these
habitats are locally diverse but globally common.

Another possible factor for all such cases is breeding specificity. One of
the reasons that the flowering plants are so species-rich compared to other
seed plants is that local variants can more easily remain reproductively
isolated long enough to form species (as a result of animal pollination,
which at its most haphazard is still more precise than wind, and stigmatic
recognition of foreign pollen, among other mechanisms).


--
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
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