**1. Introduction**

We know little about the real diversity of myxobacteria in the environment. How many myxobacteria are cultivable under standard laboratory conditions? How many resist these cultivation efforts and lie undiscovered in the ground? After an introduction to myxobacteria, the status of antibiotics, myxobacterial secondary metabolites, the Great Plate Count Anomaly phenomenon, and microbial biogeography, the diversity of cultivable and uncultivated myxobacteria in different habitats is presented. Therefore, numerous sequences from the NCBI database were analysed. The intent of this review is to draw attention to the high amount of undiscovered myxobacteria and encourage further discovery and isolation of these hidden treasures with regard to their potential as new antibiotic producers.
