ArticleScience advances2020
The global-scale distributions of soil protists and their contributions to belowground systems.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 148 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
148 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Unboxing the black box-one step forward to understand the soil microbiome: A systematic review.Microbial ecology · 2023Pooled it
- Organism body size structures the soil microbial and nematode community assembly at a continental and global scale.Nature communications · 2020Pooled it
- Drivers of Soil Community Composition in Apple Orchards: Insights From Environmental Metabarcoding.Environmental microbiology reports · 2026Article
- Protist-mediated microbiome governance: Integrating trophic ecology, rhizosphere biology, and biotechnological potential.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Review
- Influence of seasonal humidity and nitrogen on soil ciliate and bacterial diversity beneath the canopy of Neltuma laevigata.International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology · 2026Article
- Response of Soil Protist Community to Grazing Disturbance in an Alpine Grassland on the Eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- A secreted alpha-amylase effectively induces reproductive cyst formation both within and across Colpoda species, key soil-dwelling protists.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- Soil Acidification Reshapes Microbial Trophic Interactions, with Implications for Plant Responses and Ecosystem Functioning in Tea Plantation Systems.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Uncovering the Community Structure and Adaptive Characteristics of Soil Protists Across Natural, Semi-Natural and Highly Degraded Habitats.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Article
- Global dataset of soil eukaryotic communities created with a uniform protocol and long read sequencing.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Core Microbial Taxa Strengthen Root Microbial Network Stability Under Drought Stress.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Predator-mediated local convergence fosters global microbial community divergence.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Heterogeneous responses of soil microbial communities and functions in coastal wetlands to long-term nitrogen deposition.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Article
- Earthworm gut's potential positive impact on carbon cycle by influencing carbohydrate metabolism and microbial genome size.Fundamental research · 2026Article
- Exogenous resources drive convergent successional processes within soil microbial food web in two soil types.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Article
- Legacies of consecutive summer droughts on soil-borne plant parasitic protists (Oomycota: Stramenopila and Phytomyxea: Rhizaria) and protistan consumers (Cercozoa: Rhizaria) along an experimental plant diversity gradient.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Lives in a gram of soil: linking life cycle biology to soil ecology.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Divergent group-specific pathways of microbial diversity and network complexity maintain soil multifunctionality during alpine grassland restoration.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
88 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Protists are ubiquitous in soil, where they are key contributors to nutrient cycling and energy transfer. However, protists have received far less attention than other components of the soil microbiome. We used amplicon sequencing of soils from 180 locations across six continents to investigate the ecological preferences of protists and their functional contributions to belowground systems. We complemented these analyses with shotgun metagenomic sequencing of 46 soils to validate the identities of the more abundant protist lineages. We found that most soils are dominated by consumers, although parasites and phototrophs are particularly abundant in tropical and arid ecosystems, respectively. The best predictors of protist composition (primarily annual precipitation) are fundamentally distinct from those shaping bacterial and archaeal communities (namely, soil pH). Some protists and bacteria co-occur globally, highlighting the potential importance of these largely undescribed belowground interactions. Together, this study allowed us to identify the most abundant and ubiquitous protists living in soil, with our work providing a cross-ecosystem perspective on the factors structuring soil protist communities and their likely contributions to soil functioning.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.