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Data for: Comparative biogeography of marine and terrestrial microbes and macrobiota using eDNA

Ruiz Ramos, Dannise1; Lin, Meixi2

Published Apr 29, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k3j9kd5k3

Data files

Apr 29, 2026 version files 10.90 MB

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Abstract

Quantifying how patterns of biodiversity and their underlying processes vary across diverse environments and ecological communities is a long-standing challenge in biogeography. The logistics of sampling entire communities over different geographic scales are barriers to determining biogeographic theory and conceptual integration at large scales. Here, we use environmental DNA (eDNA) to overcome these challenges and examine biogeography hypotheses contrasting diversity in marine versus terrestrial realms and unicellular versus multicellular organisms. Within two days, we sampled three habitats (terrestrial, estuarine, marine) along a ~1,400 km coastal transect in California. We found that eDNA exhibited some novel and familiar alpha diversity patterns. Marine diversity was lower than terrestrial diversity in multicellular biota, though statistically indistinguishable in unicellular biota. Richness was modestly correlated within habitats and was generally higher in unicellular biota. Beta diversity was, unexpectedly, less similar within marine than terrestrial assemblages. Unicellular assemblages were consistently more similar than multicellular assemblages, and their beta diversity correlated. These patterns are consistent with predictions based on body size and nuanced effects of environmental heterogeneity. However, there was considerable heterogeneity in both datasets. Overall, eDNA provides a common currency for studying biodiversity patterns and underlying processes (e.g. drift, migration, selection) across diverse environments and complex communities and may be the foundation of a unifying macroecological framework.