Seasonal and Spatial Variation in Diversity and Abundance of Tardigrades in Leaf Litter from Louisiana and Florida (Report‪)‬

Despite early recognition that tardigrades (phylum Tardigrada) are an integral part of the fauna of soil and leaf litter (Heinis, 1916; Mihelcic, 1949), these habitats have received less research focusing on tardigrades than has focused on cryptogams and freshwater. Communities of tardigrades in soil and leaf litter can differ greatly from those in other freshwater and terrestrial habitats (Bertolani et al., 1993, 1994; Bertolani and Rebecchi, 1996; Guidetti et al., 1999; Guidetti and Bertolani, 2001), although species found in soil and leaf litter are often also present in cryptogams (Meyer and Hinton, 2007). Some research has focused on vertical distribution of tardigrades in soil and leaf litter (Hallas and Yeates, 1972; Guidetti et al., 2001; Ito and Abe, 2001). Studies have compared assemblages of tardigrades in leaf litter from different biomes or continents. Mihelcic (1958) noted that composition of communities differed little between leaf litters drawn from coniferous and deciduous forests. Guidetti et al. (1999) reported that leaf litter in beech (Fagus) forests on Roan Mountain, Tennessee, and Modenese Apennine, Italy, had communities of tardigrades that were represented essentially by the same associations of genera and species.