Community metabarcoding reveals the relative role of environmental filtering and spatial processes in metacommunity dynamics of soil microarthropods across a mosaic of montane forests

Disentangling the relative role of environmental filtering and spatial processes in driving metacommunity structure across mountainous regions remains challenging, as the way we quantify spatial connectivity in topographically and environmentally heterogeneous landscapes can influence our perception of which process predominates. More empirical datasets are required to account for taxon- and context-dependency but relevant research in understudied areas is often compromised by the taxonomic impediment. We here employed haplotype-level community DNA metabarcoding, enabled by stringent filtering of Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs), to characterize metacommunity structure of soil microarthropod assemblages across a mosaic of five forest habitats on the Troodos mountain range in Cyprus. We found similar β diversity patterns at ASV and species (OTU, Operational Taxonomic Unit) levels, which pointed to a primary role of habitat filtering resulting in the existence of largely distinct metacom...