Springboards for springtails

摘要

For small, flightless terrestrial organisms, the world is littered with barriers to dispersal. Deserts, oceans and mountain ranges present apparently insuperable limits to migration and spread for animals that are only a few millimetres in size and cannot fly. But from work by S. J. Coulson and colleagues, published in Functional Ecology, it seems that some soil arthropods can survive long enough in sea water to permit them to travel to distant lands. Assumptions about the causes of biogeographical distribution patterns among such organisms now need to be reconsidered.