WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
Researchers assembled a global mitochondrial genomic atlas from more than 3,400 freshwater metagenomes spanning 362 lakes on seven continents, recovering roughly 20,000 mitochondrial metagenome-assembled genomes and exposing substantial previously unresolved microeukaryotic diversity.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
The dataset expands the genomic reference base available for freshwater monitoring and ecological inference, especially for organisms that routine morphology or sparse barcode libraries can miss.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
Sampling remains uneven across geography and taxa, the operational species threshold is methodological rather than a complete taxonomic census, and a large atlas is not equivalent to globally complete biodiversity coverage.
SOURCE
Nature Communications
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