ABSTRACT
Dinophytes are widely distributed in marine- and fresh-waters, but have yet to be conclusively documented in terrestrial environments. Here we evaluated the presence of these protists from an environmental DNA metabarcoding dataset of Neotropical rainforest soils. Using a phylogenetic placement approach with a reference alignment and tree, we showed that the numerous sequencing reads that were assigned to the dinophytes did not associate with taxonomy, environmental preference, nutritional mode, or dormancy. All the dinophytes in the soils are most likely windblown dispersal units of aquatic species, and are not biologically active residents of terrestrial environments.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Copyright
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Posted August 10, 2020.
