Milnesium phylogeography and the ‘Everything is Everywhere’ hypothesis
Our phylogeographic analyses provide evidence for limited dispersal abilities of the great majority of Milnesium species, suggesting that in general the EiE hypothesis does not explain the geographic distribution of apochelan tardigrades. This conclusion is supported by (i ) the homogeneous geographic character of almost all major clades along their evolutionary history (Fig. 2), (ii ) the low percentage of ‘inclusion species’ (Figs 3–6 and Table 4), and (iii ) the low percentage of species with geographic ranges including more than one zoogeographic realm, with at least some being likely examples of ecdemism caused by human activity (Figs 3–6 and Table 5; see also Gąsiorek et al. 2019a). The following paragraphs discuss these three lines of evidence in detail.