Compared to other oceanic regions the pelagial of the Southern Ocean exhibits several unique features. In summer, when days are nearly totally light, the marine environment is free of fast ice and produces very short, but extremely intense summer phytoplankton blooms. A continuum of environmental processes eventually develops into the winter situation of nearly totally dark and 10 temperatures, the marine environment becomes covered by ice and very little productivity occurs. Benthic communities depend heavily on the supply of resources from the water column. Yet, the seasonality, intensity and spatial heterogeneity of the vertical fluxes resulting from the pelagic production will certainly affect its size and structure. Until recently, Antarctic meiofauna studies were a terra incognita in the field of meiobenthology, an meiobenthic research remained a big white spot in the ecological work on Antarctic marine zoobenthos. Therefore the relative importance of this group of organisms within the size range of 381000 µm has been assessed in two contrasting environments, e.g. the deep sea and low subtidal where, as to the depth of the water column, the benthic characteristics were respectively indirectly or directly related to primary production. Several topics dealing with the extremes of the environmer1 were touched using the traditional field ecology approach on the higher taxa of the soft-bottom meiofauna and, more particularly on the most abundant taxon of the nematodes. |
