Eukaryotes in soil aggregates across conservation managements: Major roles of protists, fungi and taxa linkages in soil structuring and C stock

The stabilization of soil organic carbon (SOC) promoted by conservation agriculture (CA) depends on aggregation. Aggregation protects SOC and creates heterogeneous microhabitats hosting diverse biota which in turn promote A long-term experiment, studying the interaction tillage with nitrogen (N) fertilization a soybean-wheat rotation, was used to investigate eukaryotic community diversity, composition, structure within small macroaggregates (sM) occluded microaggregates (mM). Using high-throughput Illumina sequencing, we found (i) different eukaryote diversity response management intensification across aggregates depths; (ii) conserved core composition eukaryotes CA treatments at surface subsurface layers; (iii) effect sM mM along profile according N availability; (iv) positive association protists, fungi amount mM, their content; (v) stronger complexity within- cross-domain networks (eukaryotes eukaryotes-prokaryotes) than layer. Overall, our findings demonstrate for first time that protists together play major roles structuring C cycling, Cercozoa represent hubs aggregate networks.