bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/171611; this version posted August 2, 2017. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 New barcoded primers for efficient retrieval of cercozoan sequences in high-throughput environmental diversity surveys, with emphasis on worldwide biological soil crusts Anna Maria Fiore-Donno,a# Christian Rixen,b Martin Rippin,c Karin Glaser,d Elena Samolov,d Ulf Karsten,d Burkhard Becker,c Michael Bonkowskia Institute of Zoology, Terrestrial Ecology, Cluster of Excellence in Plant Sciences, University of Cologne, Zülpicher Str. 47b, 50674 Cologne, Germanya; Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Flüelastrasse 11, 7260 Davos Dorf, Switzerlandb; Institute of Botany, University of Cologne, Zülpicher Str. 47b, 50674 Cologne, Germanyc; University of Rostock, Institute of Biological Sciences, Applied Ecology and Phycology, Albert-Einstein-Strasse 3, 18059 Rostock, Germanyd. Running title: New barcoded cercozoan primers Correspondence: Anna Maria Fiore-Donno, Institute of Zoology, Department of Terrestrial Ecology, University of Cologne, Zülpicher Str. 47b, 50674 Cologne, Germany; Fax: +492214705038; E-mail:
[email protected]. Keywords: Cercozoa, environmental sampling, protists, metabarcoding, 18S V4 variable region. Abstract We describe the performance of a new metabarcoding approach to investigate the environmental diversity of a prominent group of widespread unicellular organisms, the Cercozoa. Cercozoa is an immensely large group of protists and although it may dominate in soil and aquatic ecosystems, its environmental diversity remains undersampled.