High animal and plant richness in tropical rainforest communities has long intrigued
naturalists. It is unknown if similar hyperdiversity patterns are reflected at the microbial scale
with unicellular eukaryotes (protists). Here we show, using environmental metabarcoding of
soil samples and a phylogeny-aware cleaning step, that protist communities in Neotropical
rainforests are hyperdiverse and dominated by the parasitic Apicomplexa, which infect
arthropods and other animals. These host-specific parasites potentially contribute to the high …