Meiofaunal animals, roughly between 0.045 and 1 mm in size, are ubiquitous ecologically important inhabitants of benthic marine ecosystems. Their high species richness rapid response to environmental change make them promising targets for ecological biomonitoring studies. However, diversity patterns meiofauna remain poorly known due challenges identification using classical morphological method...

In the Mediterranean Sea hard-bottom macroalgal meadows may switch to alternative and less-productive barrens grounds, as a result of sea urchins overgrazing. Meiofauna (and especially nematodes) represent key components of benthic ecosystems, are highly-diversified, sensitive to environmental change and anthropogenic impacts, but, so-far, have been neglected in studies on regime shifts. We rep...

Despite meiofauna being one of the most popular tool for detecting the ecological effects of different sources of impact, the application of structured experimental designs to this benthic component is typically neglected, especially in subtidal rocky shores. In this study, an asymmetrical design was used to detect hard-bottom meiofaunal abundance and biodiversity response to sewage discharge. ...

Three functionally different macrofaunal species (the filter- and/or surface deposit-feeding polychaete Hediste diversicolor, and the suspension-feeding bivalves Mya arenaria and Cerastoderma glaucum) were introduced as single- and two-species treatments into microcosms containing sandy sediment with a natural meiofaunal community. H. diversicolor is a burrowing species building a system of gal...

[1] Oceanic CO2 levels are expected to rise during the next 2 centuries to levels not seen for 10–150 million years by the uptake of atmospheric CO2 in surface waters or potentially through the disposal of waste CO2 in the deep sea. Changes in ocean chemistry caused by CO2 influx may have broad impacts on ocean ecosystems. Physiological processes animals use to cope with CO2-related stress are ...

Meiofauna (invertebrates that pass through a 1-mm mesh sieve, but are retained on 40-µm mesh) represent the most abundant and diverse animal group Earth, empirical evidence of their role in benthic respiration, production carbon cycling across ecosystems is not well documented. Moreover, how meiofauna respond to changing oxygen conditions poorly understood. We further developed an incubation sy...

Declining oxygen concentrations in aquatic habitats represent extreme conditions that threaten benthic life. Hypoxia has recently become an important research topic, as areas affected by these phenomena are spreading globally. Omura Bay is one of the most highly enclosed seas Japan, and severely hypoxic occur at bottom every summer. We conducted a preliminary study center bay to evaluate how se...

Abstract Trait-based approaches connect the traits of species to ecosystem functions estimate functional diversity communities and how they may respond environmental change. For first time, we compiled a matrix across 11 for 28 Arctic ice meiofauna, including Copepoda (Subclass), Nematoda (Phylum), Acoela (Order), Rotifera Cnidaria (Phylum). Over 50 years pan-Arctic literature were manually rev...