Survey of living Foraminifera and polychaete populations at some Canadian aquaculture sites; potential for impact mapping and monitoring

Is the meiofauna a good indicator for climate change and anthropogenic impacts?

“…Studies comparing intensive and semi-intensive farming showed that low intensity farming does not impact on meiofauna community (Danovaro et al 2004b). A number of studies have also analysed foraminiferal assemblages influenced by organic enrichment from fish farms (e.g., Schafer et al 1995;Angel et al 2000;Vidović et al 2009), as well as the recovery of assemblages after the farming activity ceased (Oron et al 2014). High population densities are associated with zones that are less severely impacted.…”

Meiofauna as a Tool for Marine Ecosystem Biomonitoring

“…These were mainly conducted in the Atlantic Ocean (Bouchet et al, 2007;Clark, 1971;Schafer et al, 1995;Scott et al, 1995), the Pacific Ocean (Debenay et al, 2009), the Red Sea (Angel et al, 2000), the China Sea (Debenay & Luan, 2006), the Japan Sea (Tarasova & Preobrazhenskaya, 2007), the Adriatic Sea (Vidović et al, 2009) and the Bay of Bengal (Jayaraju et al, 2008) (Fig. 2b).…”

Spatial patterns and diversity of foraminifera from an intermittently closed and open lagoon, Smiths Lake, Australia

“…Increased species richness has been associated with both low (Setty, 1976, Schafer et al, 1991, 1995, Armynot du Châtelet et al, 2004 and high (Bandy et al, 1964a, 1964b, 1965, Cearreta, 1988, Debenay et al, 2001 the deepest parts of the lagoon, is lower than for assemblage 2. Because Smiths Lake is considered predominately oligotrophic, (Smith and Heggie, 2003) overall species richness should be higher than comparable systems where organic matter is high.…”