What are microfauna ?
Microfauna are unicellular organisms and small animals, which are only visible under a microscope. Normally, microfauna are known as creatures smaller than 0.1 mm or 100 microns in length, with mesofauna as organisms between the sizes of 0.1 mm to 2 mm, though the definition may differ. Microfauna can be found in big numbers in the soil, usually quite a few thousands per gram of soil. You can also see them by taking a small amount of wet oil and place it under a microscope to find microfauna.
Perhaps the most popular and vital microfauna are the protozoas or unicellular eukaryotes, mites or one of the successful and diverse among animals, springtails, nematodes or transparent work like creatures, rotifers or wheel-like ciliated mouthparts, and the tardigrades known as the water bears. Microfauna can be found all over the worlds as long as there are wet soil in them and some other place as well. For instance, in the dry valley of McMurdo in Antarctica, this is one of the driest and coolest parts on earth, and springtail was first discovered.
Whenever there are microfauna, there are always microfloras, which are algae, fungi, bacteria and yeasts, capable of digesting almost any organic substances and some inorganic substances like synthetic rubber and TNT. Mesofauna are some larger animals that can be found in the soil like arthropods, earthworms, large nematodes and the macrofauna, which include burrowing animals such as rabbits and moles.
The least understood soil life is microfauna because of their great diversity and minute size. Numbers of microfauna are a member of the family cryptozoa, which are the animals still undefined by science. Out of the projected 20 million species of animals in the world, only 1.8 million have been given scientific names and microfauna are the rest, much of them are from the tropics.
