hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
About twenty years ago, a long-term, large-scale project to bring more strains and species of Pristionchus to the lab was initiated by Ralf Sommer. Once we had discovered the Pristionchus-insect association, this was much easier and successful than the isolation of nematodes from soil samples. The number of described species that had been present in our lab just recently hit 51, the number of observed species is even higher. As Asia seems to be a hot spot for Pristionchus diversity, we intensified our sampling efforts there in recent years. The Western Palearctic and the Nearctic plus the Neotropics have also seen colonisation and diversification of Pristionchus strains and species. Our sampling in the other regions of the world is very limited so far and expanding the search might be rewarding. With P. chinensis we just described the 8th hermaphroditic species in the genus and I will present the advantage, hermaphrodites have in colonising new territories. Based on the latest phylogeny of Pristionchus pacificus strains, I will show the different biogeographic clades and indicate regions that are so far undersampled and could potentially harbor more diversity.
