Changes in the diversity, composition and trophic groups of protists due to transformation of lowland rainforest into plantations.

The study sites are located in tropical lowland rainforest in the Jambi province of southwest Sumatra, Indonesia. Four transformation systems, i.e., secondary rainforest (F), jungle rubber (J), rubber (R), and oil palm (O) plantations were replicated eight times (two times 1-4 with a,b,c subplots) across two landscapes, Bukit Duabelas (B) and Harapan (H), resulting in 32 sampling sites. Samples were taken in October/November 2012 (rubber jungle, rubber plantation and oil palm plantation) and November/December 2013 (rainforest) as described in (Sahner et al., 2015). In short, in each subplot (a,b,c from 1-4 plots) five soil cores (0.04 cm diameter and 0.20 cm depth) were collected. Coarse roots and stones (> 5 mm) were removed with two sieves of 10 and 5 mm mesh size. The samples from each subplot were pooled and homogenized resulting in one bulk soil sample per subplot. DNA was extracted using the MoBio PowerSoil isolation kit (Dianova, Hamburg, Germany) as recommended by the manufacturer.