Meiofaunal animals, roughly between 0.045 and 1 mm in size, are ubiquitous and ecologically important inhabitants of benthic marine ecosystems. Their high species richness and rapid response to environmental change make them promising targets for ecological and biomonitoring studies. However, diversity patterns of benthic marine meiofauna remain poorly known due to challenges in species identification using cla...
The identification of patterns and mechanisms behind species' distribution is one of the major challenges in ecology, having important outcomes for the conservation and management of ecosystems. This is especially true for those components of biodiversity providing essential ecosystem functions and for which standard surveys may underestimate their real taxonomic diversity due to high degree of cryptic diversit...
Meiofaunal organisms play a key role in estuarine ecosystems, being responsible for significant ecological processes. However, meiofauna constitutes a particularly difficult community to be monitored through conventional morphology-based approaches. New emerging tools, such as DNA metabarcoding, facilitate the access to these communities and provide an opportunity to develop routine monitoring programs. In the ...
Conservation and sustainable management of aquatic ecosystems is a priority in environmental programs worldwide. However, these aims are highly dependent on the efficiency, accuracy and cost of existent methods for the detection of keystone species and monitoring of biological communities. Rapid advances in eDNA, barcoding and metabarcoding promoted by high-throughput sequencing technologies are generating mill...
Meiobenthic organisms are key components of estuarine environments, providing invaluable functions and services. In particular, meiofaunal organisms participate actively in nutrient cycles and energy flux, supporting higher trophic levels, as well as the stabilization of sediments. Due to their small size (between 30 µm and 1mm) and high dispersal potential, meiofauna was considered to have a ubiquitous distrib...