Fig. 5

Relative importance of different ecological processes in protist community assembly. a Dispersal limitation and homogenous selection were the most influential ecological processes in both sampling sites for bulk soil and rhizosphere communities across sampling times. b Comparison between bulk soil and rhizosphere show that rhizosphere protists are under higher homogeneous selection but lower dispersal limitation during the growth and/or senescence of switchgrass. Significance is based on bootstrapping with 1000 replications. *P < 0.1; **P < 0.05; ***P < 0.01