Fig. 1

Diversity and community composition of protists communities in two marginal soil sites in southern Oklahoma. a Alpha diversity of protist communities in the two marginal soil sites. In each boxplot, a point represents a replicated sample per site and its calculated diversity index, and the diamond symbols represent the mean. The box boundaries represent the first and third quartiles of the distribution and the median is represented as the horizontal line inside each box. Boxplots whiskers span 1.5 times the interquartile range of the distribution. b Ordination plot depicting community structure of protist communities in the CL and SL sites calculated from a weighted Unifrac similarity matrix. The trend surface of the variable moisture was plotted onto the ordination space using the ordisurf function of the vegan package. CL = Clay Loam, SL = Sandy Loam; n = 30 for SL, n = 29 for CL