, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils. The study of animals of a particular region is called faunistics.
Etymology
Fauna comes from the name Fauna, a Roman goddess of earth and fertility, the Roman god Faunus, and the related forest spirits called Fauns. All three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and panis is the Modern Greek equivalent of fauna (πανίς or rather πανίδα). Fauna is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used by Carl Linnaeus from Sweden in the title of his 1745[1] work Fauna Suecica.
Subdivisions on the basis of region
Cryofauna
Cryofauna refers to the animals that live in, or very close to, cold areas.
Cryptofauna
Cryptofauna is the fauna that exists in protected or concealed
Epifauna, also called epibenthos, are aquatic animals that live on the bottom substratum as opposed to within it, that is, the
benthic
fauna that live on top of the sediment surface at the seafloor.
Infauna
Infauna are benthic organisms that live within the bottom substratum of a water body, especially within the bottom-most oceanic sediments, the layer of small particles at the bottom of a body of water, rather than on its surface. Bacteria and microalgae may also live in the interstices of bottom sediments. In general, infaunal animals become progressively smaller and less abundant with increasing water depth and distance from shore, whereas bacteria show more constancy in abundance, tending toward one million cells per milliliter of interstitial seawater.
Such creatures are found in the fossil record and include lingulata, trilobites and worms. They made burrows in the sediment as protection and may also have fed upon detritus or the mat of microbes which tended to grow on the surface of the sediment.[3] Today, a variety of organisms live in and disturb the sediment. The deepest burrowers are the ghost shrimps (Thalassinidea), which go as deep as 3 metres (10 ft) into the sediment at the bottom of the ocean.[4]
Limnofauna
Limnofauna refers to the animals that live in fresh water.
Macrofauna
Macrofauna are
benthic
or soil organisms which are retained on a 0.5 mm sieve. Studies in the deep sea define macrofauna as animals retained on a 0.3 mm sieve to account for the small size of many of the taxa.
by their
size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, rather than a taxonomic grouping. One environment for meiofauna is between grains of damp sand (see
Mystacocarida
).
In practice these are metazoan animals that can pass unharmed through a 0.5 1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 30–45 μm mesh,[5] but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher. Whether an organism passes through a 1 mm mesh also depends upon whether it is alive or dead at the time of sorting.
calcrete or laterite, whilst larger animals can be found in cave waters and wells. Stygofaunal animals, like troglofauna, are divided into three groups based on their life history - stygophiles, stygoxenes, and stygobites.[7]
myriapods and others. Some troglofauna lives permanently underground and cannot survive outside the cave environment. Troglofauna adaptations and characteristics include a heightened sense of hearing, touch and smell.[8] Loss of under-used senses is apparent in the lack of pigmentation as well as eyesight in most troglofauna. Troglofauna insects may exhibit a lack of wings and longer appendages
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Infauna organisms in hydrothermal environments have developed adaptive strategies to survive harsh conditions, such as extreme temperatures, low pH levels, and reduced salinity. They constructed galleries, with the highest abundance in H1, and the dominant classes, Malacostraca and Polychaeta, demonstrating mobility-based strategies like burrowing or crawling. These strategies help infauna cope with hydrothermal influence.” (Rodriguez Uribe 2023). hydrothermal influence refers to the transformative effects of hot water on geological, chemical, and biological systems, and it plays a significant role in a wide range of natural processes and human activities.
Vermeij, Geerat (2009), Nature: An Economic History, Princeton University Press,