Capabilities:
Benthic infauna

MER processes and identifies benthic infauna samples at the 500μm and 1.0mm mesh level with identification to at least the family-level; usually to the genus-level, and for the more common taxa, to the species-level.  With over 2000 samples processed to-date, MER has identified 400+ taxa, many of which are held in our reference collection. MER has developed proprietary spreadsheets that calculate abundance.01m², percent species-specific dominance, taxa richness, Shannon-Weiner diversity (H), and relative diversity (J).  MER also uses Systat^®11.0, Microsoft^®Excel^®, and Primer^®v6 (ver 6.1.5.) software (Clarke and Gorley, 2006), and for statistical analyses of benthic infauna, sediment granulometry, and sediment chemistry.

Benthic grab using Ponar sampler