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'Fauna' is a collective term for animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is '''flora'''.
Zoologists and paleontologists usually use ''fauna'' to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna".
Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of 80 or faunal stages, which are a series of rocks all containing similar fossils.
The name comes from Fauna, a Roman fertility and earth goddess. 'Fauna' is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used by Linnaeus in the title of his 1746 work ''Fauna Suecica''.

Contents

Subdivisions of fauna

Epifauna

Infauna

Macrofauna

Megafauna

Meiofauna

Mesofauna

Microfauna

Other

Fauna treatises

Classic faunas

See also

References

External links

Subdivisions of fauna

Epifauna

''Epifauna'' are animals that live upon the surface of sediments or soils.

Infauna

''Infauna'' are aquatic animals that live within the bottom substratum rather than on its surface. Bacteria and microalgae may also live in the interstices of bottom sediments. On average, infaunal animals become progressively rarer with increasing water depth and distance from shore, whereas bacteria show more constancy in abundance, tending toward one billion cells per milliliter of interstitial seawater.

Macrofauna

''Macrofauna'' are benthic or soil organisms which are at least one millimeter in length.

Megafauna

:''Main article: Megafauna
''Megafauna'' are large animals of any particular region or time. For example, Australian megafauna.

Meiofauna

''Meiofauna'' are small benthic invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term ''Meiofauna'' loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, rather than a taxonomic grouping. In practice these are organisms that can pass through a 1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 45 μm mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher. Whether an organism will pass through a 1 mm mesh will also depend upon whether it is alive or dead at the time of sorting.

Mesofauna

''Mesofauna'' are macroscopic soil invertebrates such as arthropods, earthworms, and nematodes.

Microfauna

''Microfauna'' are microscopic or very small animals (usually including protozoans and very small animals such as rotifers).

Other

Other terms include ''avifauna'', which means "bird fauna" and ''piscifauna'' (or ''ichthyofauna''), which means "fish fauna".

Fauna treatises

Classic faunas

★ Linnaeus, Carolus. ''Fauna Suecica''. 1746

See also

★ Animal

★ Biome

★ Flora

★ Gene pool

★ Genetic Pollution

★ Genetic Erosion

References

External links

★ Fauna & Flora International