Abstract
Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education.Gastrotricha are a meiobenthic phylum composed of 813 species known so far (2 orders, 17 families) of free-living microinvertebrates commonly present and actively moving on and into sediments of aquatic ecosystems, 339 of which live in fresh and brackish waters. The Fauna Europaea database includes 214 species of Chaetonotida (4 families) plus a single species of Macrodasyida incertae sedis. This paper deals with the 224 European freshwater species known so far, 9 of which, all of Chaetonotida, have been described subsequently and will be included in the next database version. Basic information on their biology and ecology are summarized, and a list of selected, main references is given. As a general conclusion the gastrotrich fauna from Europe is the best known compared with that of other continents, but shows some important gaps of knowledge in Eastern and Southern regions.
Highlights
The European Commission published the European Community Biodiversity Strategy, providing a framework for development of Community policies and instruments in order to comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity
Fauna Europaea contributes to this Strategy by supporting one of the main themes: to identify and catalogue the components of European biodiversity into a database in order to serve as a basic tool for science and conservation policies
The Fauna Europaea is a database of the scientific names and distribution of all living, currently known European land and fresh-water animal species assembled by a large network of experts, using advanced electronic tools for data collations and validation routines
Summary
The European Commission published the European Community Biodiversity Strategy, providing a framework for development of Community policies and instruments in order to comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity. Purpose: The Fauna Europaea is a database of the scientific names and distribution of all living, currently known European land and fresh-water animal species assembled by a large network of experts, using advanced electronic tools for data collations and validation routines. The Gastrotricha are one of the 58 Fauna Europaea major taxonomic groups, and currently number 326 freshwater species worldwide, 224 of which reported from Europe.
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