Meiobenthonic Nematoda

Research

One of our main purposes is to distinguish and describe new nematode species. The collection of German Centre of Marine Biodiversity possesses samples from different parts of the World Ocean that contain a great amount of uninvestigated nematodes.

The other great challenge is revealing the distribution patterns of nematodes in the World Ocean. Which nematode taxa inhabit the continental shelf, the continental slope, the abyss, or different regions? How high is diversity of nematode assemblages? Which taxa dominate there and how high is their density? Which environmental factors determine found regularities?

New Taxa

The deep sea is considered to be the least studied habitat on Earth! This statement is especially true of deep-sea nematodes. If we sum up all deep-sea samples, which have been used for the study of deep-sea nematodes, the complete investigated sea floor surface does not exceed several hundreds of square meters. That is why the study of deep-sea nematodes (their density, distribution, taxonomic composition, diversity, etc.) from different regions of the World Ocean is the main topic of our investigations.

With the Ecological Biodiversity Research we contribute to the following Research Fields:

Biodiversity, Systematics and Evolution

Biodiversity and Environment