Meiofauna

From Coastal Wiki
Revision as of 13:44, 26 August 2009 by Daphnisd (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
Definition of meiofauna:
Meiofauna or meiobenthos are small benthic invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term Meiofauna loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, rather than a taxonomic grouping. In practice these are organisms that can pass through a 1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 45 μm mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher. Whether an organism will pass through a 1 mm mesh will also depend upon whether it is alive or dead at the time of sorting.[1]
This is the common definition for meiofauna, other definitions can be discussed in the article

References