Senckenberg
The name „Mesofauna“ refers to a traditional classification of soil animals into different size categories, whereby “Mesofauna” typically denotes taxonomic soil-animal groups that “can generally be measured in millimetres”. The Section Mesofauna thus primarily deals with the biodiversity and ecology of soil microarthropods (i.e. Collembola and Acari).
The Section works taxonomically with soil-dwelling Prostigmata and Endeostigmata (= Actinedida, Acrai). Ecological research primarily concerns the community dynamics and community ecology of Collembola, soil microarthropods or the soil food web in general. Research on the functional role of soil animals are complemented with representative groups of the soil macrofauna. A further focus of the Section concerns biodiversity informatics, developing data infrastructures that can be used to delineate species distributions, their niche space and ecological correlations for science and applied uses.
Our work is associated with the field of research Biodiversity and Environment as well as Research Infrastructure.
History of the Section
The Section Mesofauna was founded in 2001
2009
Employment of Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Sebastian Moll as technical assistant of the section.
2001
Employment of Dr. David J. Russell as section head. Creation of the Actinedida collection with soil-dwelling species of various habitat types of Germany.