The Ecological Distribution of Tardigrades in Newfoundland

Distribution and diversity of Tardigrada along altitudinal gradients in the Hornsund, Spitsbergen (Arctic)

“…Other studies provide conflicting results, reporting a positive (e.g., Rodriguez-Roda 1951;Nelson 1975;Dastych 1987Dastych , 1988Kaczmarek, Gołdyn, Wełnicz et al 2011), a negative (e.g., Dastych 1980Beasley 1988;Collins & Bateman 2001) or no relationships (e.g., Kathman & Cross 1991;Nichols et al 2001) between tardigrade species richness and elevation. However, this inconsistency may be illusory and results reported by different authors may in fact be complementary.…”

“…A significant relationship between the structure of tardigrade communities and elevation has been documented by a number of studies (e.g., RodriguezRoda 1951;Nelson 1975;Dastych 1980Dastych , 1985Dastych , 1987Dastych , 1988Beasley 1988;Collins & Bateman 2001;Guil, Hortal et al 2009;Kaczmarek, Gołdyn, Wełnicz et al 2011). However, it is not clear which variables covarying with elevation (e.g., climate, vegetation or others) are responsible for shaping tardigrade diversity, distribution and abundance.…”

“…Some previous studies have reported an increase (e.g., Dastych 1980Dastych , 1987Dastych , 1988, a decrease (e.g., Dastych 1985;Beasley 1988;Collins & Bateman 2001) or no changes (e.g., Kathman & Cross 1991;Nichols et al 2001;Johansson et al 2013) in tardigrade abundance with increasing altitude. Although Dastych (1985) reported that in Svalbard tardigrade abundance decreases distinctly with elevation, closer examination of his data indicate that tardigrade abundance shows a unimodal relationship with altitude, reaching the highest values between 100 and 300 m a.s.l.…”

Interspecific Association and Substrate Specificity in Tardigrades from Florida, Southeastern United States

“…Positive associations have been attributed to selective predation (Wright, 1991) and faunal simplicity (Miller et al, 1996), while Collins and Bateman (2001) suggested that the interspecific competition resulting from trophic overlap caused some negative associations in Newfoundland tardigrades.…”

Annotated zoogeography of non-marine Tardigrada. Part IV: Africa

“…Remarks. The African records of this species, all of which lack details of egg structure, appear anomalous alongside the mainly Arctic and sub-Arctic localities in Greenland (McInnes 1994) and Canada (Collins & Bateman 2001, Van Rompu et al 1991b, and require confirmation.…”