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.