Patterns of protist distribution and diversification in alpine lakes across Europe

Abstract Biogeography in Europe is known to be crucially influenced by the large mountain ranges serving as biogeographical islands for cold‐adapted taxa and geographical barriers for warm‐adapted taxa. While biogeographical patterns are well‐known for plants and animals in Europe, we here investigated diversity and distribution patterns of protist freshwater communities on a European scale (256 lakes) in the light of the well‐studied post‐glacial distribution patterns of macroorganisms. Thus, our study compared 43 alpine protist communities of lakes located in the Alps, Carpathians, Pyrenees, and the Sierra Nevada with that of surrounding lowland lakes. We verified altitudinal diversity gradients of freshwater protists with decreasing richness and diversity across altitudes similar to those observed for plants and animals. Alpine specialists and generalists could be identified differing significantly in richness and diversity, but hardly in occurrence and proportions of major taxonomic groups. High proportions of region‐specific alpine specialists indicate an increased occurrence of distinct lineages within each mountain range and thus, suggested either separated glacial refugia or post‐glacial diversification within mountain ranges. However, a few alpine specialists were shared between mountain ranges suggesting a post‐glacial recolonization from a common lowland pool. Our results identified generalists with wide distribution ranges and putatively wide tolerance ranges toward environmental conditions as main drivers of protist diversification (specification) in alpine lakes, while there was hardly any diversification in alpine specialists