Meiofauna Techniques

Meiofaunal organisms are mobile multicellular animals that are smaller than macrofauna and larger than microfauna. The size boundaries of meiofauna are generally based on the standardised mesh apertures of sieves with 500 μm (or 1000 μm) as upper and 63 μm (or 42 μm) as lower limits. Meiofauna are ubiquitous, inhabiting most marine substrata, often in high densities. Meiofauna are highly diverse, and several phyla are only known to occur as meiofauna. Owing to their small size and high densities, specialised techniques are required to collect, preserve and examine meiofauna. These are described, along with approaches to determine biomass of these small animals. Their small size also makes them useful candidates for manipulative experiments, and culturing of individual species and approaches to experiments on whole communities are briefly discussed.