DNA metabarcoding reveals impacts of anthropogenic stressors on freshwater meiofauna

Leasi, Francesca; Cline, Jessica

doi:10.1016/j.limno.2022.126005

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 72 publications

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“…The study of population and community ecology using meiofauna is a challenging endeavour. First, there are biological impediments connected to the small size of the organisms under study, the fact that many of these possess soft bodies and cannot be identified after traditional fixation methods (Balsamo et al, 2020;Leasi & Cline, 2022), and that a few, ubiquitous species might dominate in the community showing limited environmental specialization (Gansfort et al, 2020), although with notable exceptions in certain oligotrophic environments (Michiels & Traunspurger, 2005;Traunspurger et al, 2020;Martínez, 2023). Second, understanding population and community ecology in meiofauna is dwarfed by technical impediments, mirroring some of those that ecologists face when documenting and understanding biodiversity patterns in other systems.…”

Section: Panel VI Population and Community Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Fundamental questions in meiofauna—how small but ubiquitous animals can help to better understand Nature

Martínez García,

Bonaglia,

Di Domenico

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Meiofauna—a collective term to define microscopic animals—represent a numerically important component of biodiversity in most of Earth’s ecosystems and play a crucial role in biogeochemical cycles. Meiofauna have also been used as models to understand fundamental adaptive processes, have contributed to a better understanding of the animal’s Tree of Life, and are believed to be a treasure trove for future genomic studies. To celebrate the diversity of research topics brought to us by the term “meiofauna”, we gathered a multidisciplinary team of 42 ecologists, taxonomists, morphologists, biogeographers, molecular biologists, and scientific disseminators to list 194 fundamental questions in meiofaunal research. Then, through an online survey, 251 scientists, administrators, students, and stakeholders assisted us in reducing this list to 50 top-priority questions. Applied topics related to anthropogenic impact and climate change received the highest scores, whereas questions related to areas in development such as genomics or adaptations, received less attention. Whereas we might not be exploiting meiofauna’s full potential yet, more and more integrative approaches and technological developments will create opportunities to employ these fascinating organisms to answer broad and important questions, despite of their impediments related to their small body size. Meiofauna research agenda should balance amongst investigating general questions, addressing more specialized research topics, and generating primary data on distribution, taxonomy, traits, and DNA sequences. The geographical and taxonomic biases that have historically affected meiofaunal research can be alleviated by promoting international cooperation, open data sharing, and an increase effort in education, taxonomic training, as well as scientific communication. We hope that this will get both researchers and the general public intrigued by those small critters that constantly lurk unseen in front of us.

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Section: Panel VI Population and Community Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Fundamental questions in meiofauna—how small but ubiquitous animals can help to better understand Nature

Martínez García,

Bonaglia,

Di Domenico

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Diversity of free-living flatworms (Platyhelminthes) in Cuba

Diez,

Sanjuan,

Bosch

et al. 2023

Biological Journal of the Linnean Society

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Cuban biodiversity is characterized by high species richness and endemism; however, free-living flatworms have been neglected in studies of the fauna of the archipelago. These animals constitute an essential component of marine and freshwater ecosystems as top predators and secondary producers. In this contribution, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of turbellarian diversity in Cuba based on a long-term sampling effort in marine, brackish, freshwater and terrestrial environments. We used observed and estimated species richness as indicators of alpha diversity. As a result, we have collected, for the first time, 279 species in Cuba, including 189 species of rhabdocoels, 33 species of polyclads, 21 species of macrostomorphs, 14 species of proseriates, 12 species of prolecithophorans, seven species of triclads and one representative each of Prorhynchida, Gnosonesimida and Bothrioplanida. At least 184 species (67%) are new to science. Fifty of these species have been recorded in published journal contributions. The remainder are pending formal identification and/or description. We demonstrate the turbellarian fauna of Cuba to be one of high diversity and endemism. Estimated species richness is much higher than that observed, exemplifying the taxonomic impediments and stressing the need for more intense sampling campaigns in the archipelago.

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DNA metabarcoding reveals impacts of anthropogenic stressors on freshwater meiofauna

Cited by 2 publications

References 72 publications

Fundamental questions in meiofauna—how small but ubiquitous animals can help to better understand Nature

Fundamental questions in meiofauna—how small but ubiquitous animals can help to better understand Nature

Diversity of free-living flatworms (Platyhelminthes) in Cuba

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