Uncovering the Community Structure and Adaptive Characteristics of Soil Protists Across Natural, Semi‐Natural and Highly Degraded Habitats

Abstract

Protists are vital to soil ecological functions. However, their diversity and community patterns remain poorly characterised across habitats. This study investigated protists in 270 samples spanning five terrestrial ecosystems: natural (forest, grassland, desert), semi‐natural (farmland) and highly degraded (mine wasteland). The species richness of protists and the consumer functional group were highest in farmland and lowest in mine wasteland. We demonstrated that habitat type ( R partial Mantel = 0.291) exerted stronger effects on protistan communities than geographic distance ( R partial Mantel = 0.072). While α‐diversity drivers varied among habitats (e.g., total phosphorus (TP) was only positive in farmland and forest), β‐diversity was consistent and significantly correlated with mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP), aridity index (AI) and moisture. We identified nine potential ecological groups of protists, reflecting their adaptive differentiation. To explore community assembly, a null model was conducted, revealing that stochastic processes dominated all habitats. Furthermore, co‐occurrence networks of protists, prokaryotes and fungi showed lower modularity and stability in mine wasteland compared with other habitats, indicating co‐occurrence patterns may be more specialised under resource limitation. Collectively, our results highlight the importance of habitat type in shaping protistan communities, suggesting that protists can be predictably regulated in degraded environments.

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