Local diversity of heathland Cercozoa explored by in-depth sequencing.

ABSTRACT: Cercozoa are abundant free-living soil protozoa and quantitatively important in soil food webs; yet, targeted high-throughput sequencing (HTS) has not yet been applied to this group. Here we describe the development of a targeted assay to explore Cercozoa using HTS, and we apply this assay to measure Cercozoan community response to drought in a Danish climate manipulation experiment (two sites exposed to artificial drought, two unexposed). Based on a comparison of the hypervariable regions of the 18S ribosomal DNA of 193 named Cercozoa, we concluded that the V4 region is the most suitable for group-specific diversity analysis. We then designed a set of highly specific primers (encompassing ~270 bp) for 454 sequencing. The primers captured all major cercozoan groups; and >95% of the obtaine

SUBMITTER: Harder CB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5030685 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature