ArticleThe ISME journal2025
Half of microbial eukaryote literature focuses on only 12 human parasites.
Article in The ISME journal, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- An Advanced Mobile Laboratory to enable field-based microbial ecology and cell biology across scales.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Although microbial eukaryotes comprise the majority of eukaryotic phylogenetic diversity and inhabit nearly all ecosystems globally, most research focuses on only a few species of human parasites. Here, we quantify the extent of research on known microbial eukaryotic species. Nearly half of the mentions of protist species on publications in PubMed referenced only 10 species included in the Protist Ribosomal Reference (PR2) Database. Likewise, although most samples in the PR2 database are free-living protists from aquatic environments, 12 species of human parasites comprise 47% of the literature. Research efforts that focus on only a handful of eukaryotic lineages severely limit our understanding of the fundamental biology of eukaryotic cells. We highlight recent efforts to characterize novel eukaryotic lineages that have resulted in a new understanding of the rules of life and identify key lineages that are notably absent or limited in the literature, despite their abundance and significance across global ecosystems.
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.