A “metapopulation” is a group of populations of the same species separated by space but linked by dispersal and migration. Metapopulations of macroscopic organisms tend to have geographically-restricted distributions, but this does not seem to be the case in microbial eukaryotes due to their astronomical abundance. The term “metapopulation” was first applied to protists’ biogeography in the article Finlay and Fenchel (2004), published in PROTIST, which contributed to the popularity of the paper. The article considered protist species as consisting of a single, cosmopolitan population. Here, we recall this paper, and assess developments during the last 15 years with respect to the question of protist species distribution on the surface of the earth.

“人口迁移”是由空间隔开但通过扩散和迁移联系在一起的同一物种的种群。宏观生物的种群倾向于在地理上受到限制的分布，但是由于微生物的天文丰度，微生物真核生物似乎并非如此。在PROTIST中发表的Finlay和Fenchel（2004）一文中，“种群迁移”一词首先被用于原生生物的生物地理学，这有助于该论文的普及。文章认为原生生物是由一个单一的世界性种群组成。在这里，我们回顾这篇文章，并评估过去15年中有关地球表面原生生物分布问题的发展。