Benthic Meiofauna in the Aegean Sea

Meiofauna refers to a discrete, microscopically-sized group of organisms that have evolved to inhabit almost all aquatic environments and thrive in marine soft sediments. They include the most abundant and phyleticaly diverse metazoan on earth, with several phyla existing only in meiofaunal size. In spite of the fact that Mediterranean meiofauna has been investigated since 1845, information from the Aegean Sea appeared more than a century later. Nonetheless, meiofauna research in the Aegean Sea has flourished over the last three decades, establishing the important role of this previously neglected component of benthic research in the Eastern Mediterranean. In this chapter we summarise the most important findings of metazoan meiobenthic research in the Aegean Sea. We review spatial and temporal aspects of meiofaunal communities and discuss their bathymetric trends and the effect major environmental drivers, such as food, may have on meiobenthos.