Abstract
Most of our planet’s biodiversity is still unknown, particularly in the sea. Although around the island of Sylt in the North Sea, the small zoobenthos (meiofauna) has been studied intensively since the 1950s, repeating previous surveys revealed an unexpected wealth of new species in addition to the 330 species of free-living microturbellarians (non-parasitic Platyhelminthes) already known from this area. Extrapolation from well-known to less-known habitat types suggests that a total of some 520 Platyhelminth species should be expected around this island, about 670 in the North Sea ecoregion, and 830 in the ‘Northern European Sea’ ecoprovince. Assuming that the other biogeographic provinces of the planet harbour a similar diversity, a total of some 20,000 marine microturbellarian species is estimated for the global shelf zones. Less than 10% of these are known by now. As a contribution to fill that gap, ten new taxa are described: Coelogynopora minuta n. sp., Coelogynopora sopottehlersae n. sp., Cirrifera paraculeata n. sp., Boreocelis fragilis n. sp., Postbursoplana noldti n. sp., Promesostoma wehrenbergi n. sp., Ptyalorhynchus oculatus n. sp., Acrorhynchides canaliculatus n. sp., Dactyloplana n. gen., and Dactyloplana tridigitata n. sp.
Highlights
Meiofauna is a largely neglected component of the marine benthos [1]
Elevations in the level of infra- and subtidal species richness come from 12 species recorded for the first time near Sylt and about 25 new species, some of which are described in the systematic part
The lack of a prostatic vesicle is shared with quite a number of other species, including C. axi, C. solifer, C. gallica, C. scalpri, C. sequana, and C. solifer
Summary
Meiofauna is a largely neglected component of the marine benthos [1] These are the benthic organisms small enough to pass through 1 mm meshes but large enough to be retained on a 63 μm screen. That is why marine meiofauna is rarely studied, and if so, most studies concentrate on copepods or nematodes [2], which have a hard skin (the carapace in copepods and a cuticle in nematodes) that keeps their body shape during fixation. They can be studied in a preserved state, which allows for short field sampling campaigns and for the evaluation of the fixed. > 650 meiofaunal species were recorded from this beach, which exceeded the number of macrofaunal species by an order of magnitude [4]
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