Protist communities are correlated with abiotic soil factors, but not resources, prey, or predators along a subalpine secondary succession

作者：Ajuan Zhang, Anton Potapov, Ruyi Luo, Yan Zhang, Wei Qiang, Bing Liu, Xueyong Pang · 发表于：Geoderma · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.geoderma.2025.117310 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies、Isotope Analysis in Ecology、Protist diversity and phylogeny

• Abiotic soil factors are primary drivers of protist community composition. • Biotic factors show limited association with protist community structure. • Protists at higher trophic levels respond more strongly to environmental variation. Protists are pivotal components of soil micro-food webs, influencing microbial functioning and nutrient cycling. While abiotic soil factors consistently drive protist communities, the roles of bottom-up (resources) and top-down (predators) forces remain understudied. The lack of integrative studies on these drivers constrains our understanding of changes in protistan communities. To fill this gap, we investigated a subalpine succession (grassland, shrubland, secondary forest, primary forest) in southwestern China, using 18S rRNA gene sequencing to assess protist communities. We specifically tested how basal plant resources, food web components, and abiotic soil factors shape protist communities and their functional groups (phagotrophic, parasitic, phototrophic). The results showed that overall protist diversity decreased during secondary succession, being lowest in secondary birch forests. Abiotic soil factors, especially soil moisture, total phosphorus, and pH, were strongly correlated with protist community composition, while plant resources, prey, and predators showed weaker associations, except for parasitic protists, which were also associated with plant resources and invertebrate diversity. The community composition of phagotrophic and...