Definition
The study of meiofauna is a late component of benthic research, even though meiobenthic animals have been known since the early days of microscopy. Animals which live in the water filling the spaces of capillary sands have been known to exist since the 1800s (Higgins and Thiel 1988). The terms meiobenthos or meiofauna are largely used in many references as synonyms, with meiobenthos having been considered as interstitial fauna of the meiofauna living in sediments. The term “meiobenthos” was introduced and defined in 1942 by Mare, in her account of the benthos of muddy substrates of Plymouth (England), to describe benthic metazoans of intermediate size (Mare 1942). Nowadays, members of the meiofauna are considered mobile and sometimes also haptosessile benthic animals smaller than those traditionally called macrobenthos but larger than the microbenthos (bacteria, diatoms, and...
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Adão, H. (2022). Metazoan Meiofauna: Benthic Assemblages for Sustainable Marine and Estuarine Ecosystems. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Life Below Water. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98536-7_41
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