ArticleEnvironmental microbiology2022
Soil protist function varies with elevation in the Swiss Alps.
Article in Environmental microbiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Uncovering the Community Structure and Adaptive Characteristics of Soil Protists Across Natural, Semi-Natural and Highly Degraded Habitats.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Article
- Biodiversity in mountain soils above the treeline.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- The Patterns and Environmental Factors of Diversity, Co-Occurrence Networks, and Assembly Processes of Protistan Communities in Bulk Soils of Forests.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Nitrogen Fertilization Alleviates Microplastic Effects on Soil Protist Communities and Rape (Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Biotic interactions explain seasonal dynamics of the alpine soil microbiome.ISME communications · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 9 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Protists are abundant and play key trophic functions in soil. Documenting how their trophic contributions vary across large environmental gradients is essential to understand and predict how biogeochemical cycles will be impacted by global changes. Here, using amplicon sequencing of environmental DNA in open habitat soil from 161 locations spanning 2600 m of elevation in the Swiss Alps (from 400 to 3000 m), we found that, over the whole study area, soils are dominated by consumers, followed by parasites and phototrophs. In contrast, the proportion of these groups in local communities shows large variations in relation to elevation. While there is, on average, three times more consumers than parasites at low elevation (400-1000 m), this ratio increases to 12 at high elevation (2000-3000 m). This suggests that the decrease in protist host biomass and diversity toward mountains tops impact protist functional composition. Furthermore, the taxonomic composition of protists that infect animals was related to elevation while that of protists that infect plants or of protist consumers was related to soil pH. This study provides a first step to document and understand how soil protist functions vary along the elevational gradient.
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Registered trials
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