Dispersal limitations and historical factors determine the biogeography of specialized terrestrial protists.

Recent studies show that soil eukaryotic diversity is immense and dominated by micro-organisms. However, it is unclear to what extent the processes that shape the distribution of diversity in plants and animals also apply to micro-organisms. Major diversification events in multicellular organisms have often been attributed to long-term climatic and geological processes, but the impact of such processes on protist diversity has received much less attention as their distribution has often been believed to be largely cosmopolitan.

Abrupt ecological changes in the last 800 years inferred from a mountainous bog using testate amoebae traits and multi-proxy data.

Mountainous peatlands of Western Sudetes are considered a unique habitat in Central Europe. The region contains one of the largest raised bog complexes in temperate Europe and is thus of great importance for biodiversity conservation. In this first high-resolution study from this region we use long-term ecological data to assess how these mountain wetland ecosystems responded to anthropogenic impacts and climate change.