Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Protists play important roles in food chains and symbioses in soil and aquatic environments, displaying an enormous morphological and functional diversity 1,2 . While most commonly found protist species are well known to science, our global-scale environmental DNA survey across soil, water, and sediments reveals dozens of novel, phylum-level phylogenetic lineages that remain to be characterized for basic morphology and function. A vast majority of these undescribed taxa occur in marine water and sediments, but some are common in soil. Most of these novel taxa have distinct substrate and habitat preferences and biogeographic patterns. To accord these lineages scientific agency and enable unambiguous scientific communication, we propose formal names for 150 species to phylum-level taxa from 25 deep lineages based on eDNA and rRNA gene long-read sequence information.
Authors: Leho Tedersoo, Vladimir Mikryukov, Sirje Sildever, Dominika Chmolowska, Kasia Piwosz, Mathisse Meyneng, Arthur Monjot, Javier del Campo, Enrique Lara, Ali Hakimzadeh, Stefan Geisen, Kristel Panksep, Mo Bahram, Angela M. Oliverio, Rachel M. Shepherd, Sonja Rückert, Anders Lanzen, Vedprakash G. Hurdeal, Maria Concetta Eliso, Raffaella Casotti, Mahdiehalsadat Hosseynimoghadam, Raffaele Siano, Marina Chauvet, Victoria Prins, Veljo Kisand, Sten Anslan, Saad Alkahtani, R. Henrik Nilsson
Institutions: King Saud University, University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, National Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Ifremer, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Geo-Ocean, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, Real Jardín Botánico, Wageningen University & Research, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Aarhus University, Syracuse University, University of Duisburg-Essen, Ikerbasque, AZTI, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, University of Jyväskylä, University of Gothenburg
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Award: G715690739
OpenAlex ID: W7204847409