Coalescent trees in the oceans

Planktonic communities in the oceans host a huge number of species. In this talk, I will introduce a spatial coalescence model that predict the impact of oceanic turbulence on the diversity of these communities. The model predicts that oceanic currents cause a steeper decay the species abundance distribution, thus shaping more diverse communities. We confirm our predictions by comparing metabarcoding data from oceans and freshwater ecosystems.

Reference: P. Villa-Martin, A. Bucek, T. Bourguignon, S. Pigolotti, Science Advances 6 (29), eaaz9037 (2020).