Protist communities are correlated with abiotic soil factors, but not resources, prey, or predators along a subalpine secondary succession

Protists are pivotal in soil micro-food webs, influencing microbial functioning and nutrient cycling. While abiotic soil factors consistently drive protist communities, the roles of bottom-up (resources) and top-down (predators) forces remain understudied. The lack of studies integrating different driving forces and their interactions constrains our understanding of changes in protistan communities. To fill this gap, we investigated a subalpine succession in southwestern China (grassland, shrubland, secondary forest, primary forest), using 18S rRNA gene sequencing to explore protist communities.