bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/531970; this version posted January 27, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.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 1 Environmental selection and spatiotemporal structure of a major group of 2 soil protists (Rhizaria: Cercozoa) in a temperate grassland 3 Running title (50 char): Community structure of soil protists (Cercozoa) 4 Anna Maria Fiore-Donno1,2*, Tim Richter-Heitmann3, Florine Degrune4,5, Kenneth 5 Dumack1,2, Kathleen M. Regan6, Sven Mahran7, Runa S. Boeddinghaus7, Matthias C. 6 Rillig4,5, Michael W. Friedrich3, Ellen Kandeler7, Michael Bonkowski1,2 7 1Terrestrial Ecology Group, Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany 8 2Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (CEPLAS), Cologne, Germany 9 3Microbial Ecophysiology Group, Faculty of Biology/Chemistry, University of Bremen, 10 Bremen, Germany 11 4Insitute of Biology, Plant Ecology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany 12 5Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research, Berlin, Germany 13 6Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA USA 14 7Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation, Department of Soil Biology, University of 15 Hohenheim, Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Germany. 16 Correspondence: Anna Maria Fiore-Donno,
[email protected], Biozentrum 17 Koeln, Zuelpicher Str. 47b, 50674 Cologne, Germany. Phone +49 221 470 2927 18 Keywords: biogeography, functional traits, soil ecology, protozoa, microbial assembly, 19 environmental selection, dispersal limitation 20 Abstract 21 Soil protists are increasingly appreciated as essential components of soil foodwebs; however, 22 there is a dearth of information on the factors structuring their communities.