Composition, distribution and biomass of meiobenthos in the Oosterschelde estuary (SW Netherlands) : The structure of the benthic system

Meiofauna composition, abundance, biomass, distribution and diversity were investigated for 31 stations in summer. The sampling covered the whole Oosterschelde and comparisons between the subtidal-intertidal and between the western-central - eastern compartment were made. Meiofauna had a community density ranging between 200 and 17 500 ind 10 cm -2 ,corresponding to a dry weight of 0.2 and 8.4 gm -2 . Abundance ranged between 130 and 17 200 ind 10 cm -2 for nematodes and between 10 and 1600 ind 10 cm -2 for copepods. Dry weight biomass of these taxa was between 0.5-7.0 gm -2 and 0.008-0.3 gm -2 for nematodes and copepods respectively