Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Fields of general relevance and broad public interest
a. New areas, novel communities, exotic biotopes
b. The deep-sea
c. Newly accessible polar regions
Chapter 2: Pollution and Meiofauna
a. Oil spills at the deep-sea bottom
b. Petroleum hydrocarbons in ground water aquifers
c. Water acidification and CO2-increase
d. Microplastics and plastic fibres
Chapter 3: Future ecological trends in meiobenthos research
a. Aspects of biodiversity
b. Principles of distribution, dispersal, and colonization
c. Organismic interactions – meiofauna between microbiota and macrofauna
Chapter 4: Physiology, biochemistry and meiofauna – a rarely touched realm
a. Hypoxia, anoxia and hydrogen sulfide – fields of physiological challenge
b. Temperature – a physiological driver
c. Fatty acids as biomarkers
d. Physiological reactions revealed by genetic analyses
Chapter 5: Towards and integrated triad – taxonomy, morphology, and phylogeny
a. Advances in the methodological basis
b. New trends reviving ‘old morphology’
c. Phylogeny and evolution – meiofauna at the beginning
Epilogue