Microbiomes interconnect on a planetary scale, new study finds

In a new study published in Cell, scientists in the Bork Group at EMBL Heidelberg reveal that microbes living in similar habitats are more alike than those simply inhabiting the same geographical region. By analyzing tens of thousands of metagenomes, the team found that while most microbes adapt to a specific ecosystem, a rarer subset known as "generalists" can thrive across very different habitats.