Keystone protist suppression triggers mesopredator release and biotic homogenization in complex soil microbial communities.

ABSTRACT: The keystone species concept holds that certain members of an ecological community, despite their low abundance, exert disproportionately large effects on species diversity and composition. In microbial ecology, experimental validation of this concept has been limited because targeted removal of individual species remains technically challenging. Here, we developed a procedure to test the keystone species concept within a soil microbial food web by selectively suppressing a protist predator at the microscale via UV-induced phototoxicity in a microfluidic soil chip system. We targeted a hypotrich ciliate (subclass Hypotrichia), and combined microscopy with high-throughput amplicon sequencing of microbial taxonomic markers to assess, across multiple trophic levels, how its suppression affect

SUBMITTER: Maillard F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12676721 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature