Currently there is very limited understanding of genetic population structure in the Antarctic benthos. We conducted one of the first studies of microsatellite variation in an Antarctic benthic invertebrate, using the ubiquitous amphipod Orchomenella franklini (Walker, 1903). Seven microsatellite loci were used to assess genetic structure on three spatial scales: sites (100 s of metres), locati...

The study was carried out to ascertain benthic macro-invertebrates checklist in the Cross River, Nigeria and using it for bio-indication of the river quality. A total of 186 benthos specimens were collected. The phylum Insecta was most abundant (96) representing 51.61% of total benthos abundance; followed by Oligochaeta 60 (32.25%), Nemertea 10 (5.37%), Hirudiae 8 (4.3%), Cladocera 6 (3.22%), A...

Toxicity-based sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) are often used to assess the potential of sediment contamination to adversely affect benthic macrofauna, yet the correspondence of these guidelines to benthic community condition is poorly documented. This study compares the performance of 5 toxicity-based SQG approaches to a new benthos-based SQG approach relative to changes in benthic communit...

The term benthos, coined by the German naturalist Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel in 1891 [...]

Elucidating the relationship between ciliate communities in the benthos and the plankton is critical to understanding ciliate diversity in marine systems. Although data for many lineages are sparse, at least some members of the dominant marine ciliate clades Oligotrichia and Choreotrichia can be found in both plankton and benthos, in the latter either as cysts or active forms. In this study, we...

This study used a reef-up approach to map coral reef benthos, substrates and bathymetry, with high spatial resolution hyperspectral image data. It investigated a physics-based inversion method for mapping coral reef benthos and substrates using readily available software: Hydrolight and ENVI. Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) data were acquired over Heron Reef in July 2002. The spec...