Nanofauna (flagellates, amoebae) diversity in relation to land use and ecosystem functioning NANOFAUNA DIVERSITY (NANOFAUN)

原生动物在控制土壤中细菌碳通量方面起着主导作用，特别是在植物根际和碎屑土中。与纳米原生动物在土壤系统中的基本作用相反，只有关于土壤中这些最丰富的真核生物多样性的轶事信息。人们普遍忽视微型动物的一个主要原因是，在分析不透明土壤环境中的小型原生生物时存在方法上的困难，而且缺乏分类学专门知识。然而，最近的发展，在分子生物学和所谓的不可培养的原生生物的培养，现在允许纳入纳米动物的研究，以关闭这一重要的营养环节在土壤食物网的重要差距。在第一个赠款期间，我们的小组已经开发了新的特异性分子引物的几个分支的鞭毛虫和变形虫，目前应用于第一个高通量454测序计划。我们还采用了一种新的等分培养程序的土壤，允许单克隆测序，土壤悬浮液的直接分析。我们准备将这些方法应用于所有150个深入研究的森林地块，以分析鞭毛虫和变形虫的丰度和生物多样性。这些方法的结合，现在使我们能够获得可比的估计异养鞭毛虫和裸变形虫的多样性在前所未有的细节。这产生了全球第一个数据集，认为纳米原生生物是最丰富但在定量和定性水平上研究最少的土壤成分，与相应的细菌，真菌和许多其他生物和非生物土壤参数（地上和地下）的数据直接相关。缩小细菌和多细胞生物之间的差距应该是我们理解土壤生物多样性的基础。

Protozoa play a dominant role in controlling the flux of carbon through bacteria in soil, in particular in the plant rhizosphere and detritusphere. In contrast to the fundamental role of nanoprotozoa in soil systems there is only anecdotal information on the diversity of these most abundant eukaryotes in soil. One major reason for the general ignorance of nanofauna were methodological difficulties in analysing small protists in the opaque soil environment and the lack of taxonomic expertise. However, recent developments in molecular biology and in the cultivation of so-called uncultivable protists now allow the incorporation of nanofauna studies to close the important gap on this important trophic link in the soil food web. During the first grant period our groups have developed new specific molecular primers for several clades of flagellates and amoebae which are currently applied in a first high through-put 454- sequencing initiative. We also adopted a new aliquot cultivation procedure to soils, allowing sequencing of single clones, and direct analyses of soil suspensions. We are ready to apply these methods on all 150 intensively studied forest plots to analyze the abundance and biodiversity of flagellates and amoebae. The combination of these methods now allows us to obtain comparable estimates of the diversity of heterotrophic flagellates and naked amoebae in unprecedented detail. This generates the first data set worldwide considering nanoprotists as the most abundant but least studied soil component on a quantitative and qualitative level in direct relation to data on corresponding bacteria, fungi, and many other biotic and abiotic soil parameters (above and below ground). Closing the gap between bacteria and multicellular organisms should be fundamental for our understanding of the biodiversity in soil.