Microbial Diversity on Islands: Cosmopolitanism and Endemism

Dear Colleagues,

Biodiversity on islands, especially on remote oceanic islands, is affected by several environmental constraints that modulate the composition of local communities and ecosystem functioning. As a result of such processes, islands generally have reduced species richness but high levels of endemism that contribute greatly to global biodiversity. Although this is well recognised for plants and animals, the distribution of microorganisms has long been considered not influenced by geographical effects and that “everything is everywhere but the environment selects”. However, recent findings suggest that previously neglected processes such as isolation and dispersal limitation have an important role in the distribution of a wide range of microorganisms, including protists and cyanobacteria. Thus, the hypothesis of moderate endemicity was suggested as an alternative to the everything is everywhere hypothesis.

The introduction of novel approaches to access biodiversity, such as advanced morphometric and molecular systematics tools, has revealed new microbial taxa during the last several decades, including new genera and species of cyanobacteria, microalgae, heterotrophic prokaryotes, and fungi. Even though most lineages of microorganisms are cosmopolitan, an increase in endemicity has been found with increasing phylogenetic resolution.

Contrary to the considerable knowledge on the island biogeography of higher organisms, the distribution of microorganisms within and among islands is poorly known. The study of microbial diversity in islands is of the highest importance, as it will contribute to the knowledge of global biodiversity and to the ongoing debate on the biogeography of microorganisms. Furthermore, many microorganisms have emerged as promising sources of metabolites with applications in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, agriculture, and energy, among others.

In this Special Issue, we invite researchers to contribute papers (articles, reviews, or short communications) on the diversity, ecology, biogeography, genetics, and/or biotechnology of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria, microalgae, heterotrophic protists, and fungi, highlighting the biodiversity within insular environments and their potential as genetic and secondary metabolite resources.

Dr. Rita Cordeiro
Dr. Amélia Fonseca
Dr. Vitor Gonçalves
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• cyanobacteria
• microalgae
• fungi
• biodiversity
• biogeography
• ecology
• conservation
• taxonomy
• molecular systematics
• biotechnology