Meiofauna are microscopic marine organisms that live between grains of sand in ocean, coastal, river, and stream sediments and provide important services such as recycling organic material in the sediment that contribute to healthy marine ecosystems.
Meiofauna provide important ecosystem services such as waste removal to the deep sea-floor environment and can act as indicators of ecosystem health.
Meiofauna are invertebrate organisms that live in seafloor sediments. These marine creatures perform ecosystem functions such as trophic transfer, biogeochemical cycles, pollution removal, and sediment transport stability.
Scientists from Troy University and the University of Copenhagen, who are studying potential oil spill impacts on seafloor-dwelling marine life, examined microscopic invertebrates that live in the sediment (meiofauna).
Know what meiofauna is? Most people have to look it up. Stephen Landers, professor in the Biological and Environmental Sciences department at Troy University, focuses the majority of his research on the tiny invertebrates that populate the ocean floor, joking,