Diversity
From Wikionchus
Nematodes are everywhere! Go outside and try to take a soil sample of 20 ml that does NOT contain nematodes. You can isolate them with the Petri dish method
About 20,000 species have been described so far but the estimated number of existing species is MUCH HIGHER!
There might be 10,000,000 species. This estimate is entirely based on assumption.
The genus Pristionchus does not contain only the one species Pristionchus pacificus (as the genus Caenorhabditis consists of more species than only C. elegans). At the moment 27 species of Pristionchus are described. Some people do believe that there are a lot of synonyms within those descriptions. However, the Sommer Lab at the moment has 15 different species in culture.
