Assessing meiofaunal variation among individuals utilising morphological and molecular approaches: an example using the Tardigrada.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Meiofauna - multicellular animals captured between sieve size 45 mum and 1000 mum - are a fundamental component of terrestrial, and marine benthic ecosystems, forming an integral element of food webs, and playing a critical roll in nutrient recycling. Most phyla have meiofaunal representatives and studies of these taxa impact on a wide variety of sub-disciplines as well as having social and economic implications. However, studies of variation in meiofauna are presented with several important challenges. Isolating individuals from a sample substrate is a time consuming process, and identification requires increasingly scarce taxonomic expertise. Finding suitable morphological characters in many of these organisms is often difficult even for experts. Molecular markers are

SUBMITTER: Sands CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2387140 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature