The Meiofauna off the Coast of Northumberland I. The Structure of The Nematode Population

Abstract

Although nematodes form the dominant meiofaunal group in almost all marine sediments, ecological investigations have been confined mainly to littoral or shallow water habitats. Among these studies may be included those of Wieser (1959), Gerlach (1953, 1954), Capstick (1959), King (1962), Rie-mann (1966) and Hopper & Meyers (1967). The qualitative distribution of the nematode fauna of various types of substrates in Kiel Bay and from the Chilean Coast have been discussed by Gerlach (1958) and Wieser (1959a). The only work which contains both qualitative and quantitative data from offshore substrates is that of Wieser (1960), which concerns the shallow sediments (12–30 m) in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, and contains a review of the purely quantitative results of previous authors.