Introduction

Considerable scientific progress has been made in describing structural aspects of marine ecosystems and in particular the determinants of the distribution and abundance of larger-sized species and their assemblages whereas the smaller-sized fauna has been largely neglected.

The objective of Manuela is three-fold:

1. To integrate the currently fragmented information on the dynamics and functional role of meiofaunal.
2. To improve understanding of how the activities of meiobenthic organisms, population dynamics and community assemblages are linked to ecosystem processes.
3. To facilitate meiobenthic research within the MarBEF community and stimulate the interest in meiobenthology.

A central MANUELA database will be compiled capturing the available data on meiobenthos on a broad European scale.All the information that is stored in the integrated database is subject to the rules of the MANUELA data policy, which has precedence to the MarBEF data policy (consultable on the MarBEF website by clicking here).

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