Morphological and DNA barcoding-based studies of meiofauna community variation along the salinity gradient and response to environmental quality changes within Irish transitional waters

Abstract

The primary focus of this thesis is to identify the changes in meiofauna community structure in response to the estuarine salinity gradient. This was achieved through morphological identification of the nematode phylum to species level in parallel with DNA barcoding of the whole meiofauna community and associated microscopic benthic fauna and flora. This is the first study to simultaneously identify environmental samples of nematode species and meiofauna taxa diversity using morphology-based and DNA barcoding methods, and reports an accurate correspondence between the two techniques.