standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

Chapter 16
Seafloor Meiofauna in Potential Mining
Areas: Current State of Knowledge,
Possible Impact of Exploration, Data
Parameters to be Standardised and Gaps
in Knowledge
Dr. P. John D. Lambshead, Head, Nematode Research Group, The
Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom
This paper deals specifically with the use of meiofauna – considered
the dominant Metazoa in deep-sea communities and used for
environmental monitoring of the European coasts and estuaries. Although
practical problems have been associated with their use, new technology
and research are constantly solving these issues.
With the development of new techniques and continuous deep-sea
meiofauna research, any standardization recommended at this time must
be also be able to incorporate future developments.
1. Current State of Knowledge of the Meiofauna of the
CCFZ and the Central Indian Basin
Current knowledge of species distributions of abyssal meiofauna is
extremely sparse. Lambshead 1 estimated that deep-sea meiofauna species
distributions had been analysed from samples making up less than 5
square metres of deep-sea sediment. This figure is probably doubled or
trebled now but is still a woefully inadequate sample from which to estimate
diversity patterns in an environment that makes up half of the earth’s
surface. For this reason, I shall consider what is known in general about
deep-sea meiofauna.
The most important meiofaunal taxon in deep-sea sediments is the
marine Nematoda (roundworms or threadworms). These worms dominate
the Metazoa 2 . Another important meiofauna taxon for monitoring is the
benthic Copepoda. There are other ecologically important taxa, such as the
Turbellaria, but for various reasons these are difficult to work with and
unsuitable for monitoring. For the purpose of this document, mainly
nematodes will be used as examples.
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