Guide to the Identification of Marine Meiofauna

Biology field trips or walks on the beach usually focus on larger organisms that are easy to collect and examine but overlook an abundant diversity of small organisms, as they do not fit into the micro- or macro size range. When the term “meiobenthos” was coined by Molly F. Mare in 1942 she recognized eight taxa in this category, but now it is generally used to define organisms that pass through a 1.00 mm sieve but are retained on a 45 μm sieve. As meiobenthos can also include microalgae, meiofauna is more applicable to the eukaryotic fauna, though the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are earlier books on meiofauna (Hulings & Gray 1971, Higgins & Thiel 1988, Giere 2009) that provide good overviews but leave gaps in identification that are now filled by Guide to the Identification of Marine Meiofauna, Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa (ed.)....