Human land use promotes range expansion of soil protists from temperate to subtropical regions in China.

ABSTRACT: Land-use changes are reshaping the distribution of aboveground species worldwide. However, the impact of land-use changes on the distribution of soil organisms remains poorly understood. In particular, we lack a mechanistic understanding of the environmental factors reshaping the distribution of soil microbiota in response to global biological homogenization. Here, we used metabarcoding to investigate the biogeography of protists and their relationships with prey and hosts in three human-dominated ecosystem types, i.e., farmlands, residential areas, and parks, along with natural forests, in subtropical and temperate climatic regions across China. We found that human land-use systems extended the distribution range of habitat-generalist protists compared to forests. This human-facilitated s

SUBMITTER: Li ZP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12318147 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature