GUYASOILeDNA: a trans-kingdom and functional eDNA dataset on soil biodiversity from diverse land-cover types in French Guiana

Soil biodiversity represents approximately 60% of all described species on Earth and plays a critical role in terrestrial ecosystem functioning. However, knowledge of tropical soil biota and their roles remains highly fragmentary, especially in hyperdiverse tropical regions that remain largely undersampled relative to their temperate counterparts. Recent non-invasive methods, such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, have enabled large-scale data collection across kingdoms of life and habitats, including understudied compartments such as soils. Here, GUYASOILeDNA is presented as the first large-scale eDNA metabarcoding dataset of tropical soil Bacteria (16S), Eukaryota (18S), Fungi (ITS1), and Insecta (16S) from French Guiana. This dataset describes the distribution of 69,881 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in 1,410 soil samples collected across a variety of forest types, savannas, pastures, and urban areas. In addition, functional annotations based on trophic guild assignments are provided for 51% of the OTUs. This dataset can be used for meta-analyses, exploring soil taxonomic and functional diversity in relation to environmental factors, studying spatial associations among soil groups, and informing protected area management, among other applications. While this dataset represents an important first step toward understanding soil biodiversity in the region, it also reveals key gaps that may guide future research.