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Editorial
. 2016 Jun 14;113(24):6585-7.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1606105113. Epub 2016 Jun 2.

The vast unknown microbial biosphere

Carlos Pedrós-Alió  1 , Susanna Manrubia  2
Affiliations
Editorial

The vast unknown microbial biosphere

Carlos Pedrós-Alió et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
(A) Abundance of primary producers on Earth. Tan to green colors on land show density of green vegetation as the normalized difference vegetation index. Deep blue to yellow color in the oceans show chlorophyll concentration (mg/m−3). Image courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory. (B) Number of vascular plant species on land, from <100 species per 10,000 km2 (white) to >5,000 (red). Image courtesy of ref. and Wilhelm Barthlott (University of Bonn, Bonn), copyright Wilhelm Barthlott.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Summary of the ecological theory used to estimate S. The species abundance distribution is a canonical log-normal (blue curve), with the most-abundant species yielding the maximum of the individuals curve. The less-abundant species is represented by a single individual. The area under the SAD (in pale blue) yields the diversity of taxa S. Blue circles correspond to data of bird species abundance (from ref. 7) and are intended as an illustration of a good fit between field data and the log-normal SAD.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

  • Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity.
    Locey KJ, Lennon JT. Locey KJ, et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 May 24;113(21):5970-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1521291113. Epub 2016 May 2. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016. PMID: 27140646 Free PMC article.

References

    1. Locey KJ, Lennon JT. Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2016;113(21):5970–5975. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Erwin TL. Tropical forests: Their richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species. Coleopt Bull. 1982;36(1):74–75.
    1. Costello MJ, May RM, Stork NE. Can we name Earth’s species before they go extinct? Science. 2013;339(6118):413–416. - PubMed
    1. Mora C, Tittensor DP, Adl S, Simpson AGB, Worm B. How many species are there on Earth and in the ocean? PLoS Biol. 2011;9(8):e1001127. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Pedrós-Alió C. The rare bacterial biosphere. Annu Rev Mar Sci. 2012;4:449–466. - PubMed

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