Sampling
To assess the abundance, species identity, biomass, and traits of
protists in each patch, we recorded videos of 0.2 ml samples from each
patch every seven days, starting from day five. The only exception was
on day zero, when we filmed the autotrophic and heterotrophic in the two
source mixtures as a proxy for the individual autotrophic and
heterotrophic patches, respectively. While the first two time points
(days 0 and 5) took place before the first disturbance, all other
observations were always recorded five days after the disturbance to
allow communities to recover from disturbances. Each video was 5 s long
and recorded using a Hamamatsu Orca Flash 4.0 (Herrsching am Ammersee,
Germany) camera at 1.6x magnification.