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Fauna is all of the animal
Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
 life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora
Flora

In botany, flora has two meanings. The first meaning, flora of an area or of time period, refers to all plant life occurring in an area or time period, especially the naturally occurring or indigenous plant life....
.

Zoologists
Zoology

Zoology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of animals. The most common pronunciation of "zoology" is ; however, an alternative pronunciation is ....
 and paleontologists
Paleontology

File:Geological time spiral - sharper.pngPaleontology from Greek: pa?a??? "old, ancient", ??, ??t- "being, creature", and ????? "speech, thought" is the study of prehistory life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments ....
 use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert
Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert is a North American desert which straddles part of the United States-Mexico border and covers large parts of the U.S. states of Arizona and California and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California....
 fauna" or the "Burgess shale
Burgess Shale

The Burgess Shale Formation is one of the world's most celebrated fossil localities, and is famous for the exceptional preservation of the fossils found within it, in which the soft parts are preserved....
 fauna".

Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of faunal stage
Faunal stage

In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a Geologic record laid down in an single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition....
s, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils.

The name comes from Fauna
Fauna (goddess)

In Roman mythology, Fauna is an alternate name for:*Bona Dea, was a goddess of fertility, healing, virginity and women. She may also be known as Marica....
, a Roman fertility and earth goddess, the Roman god Faunus
Faunus

In Religion in ancient Rome and its Roman mythology, Faunus was the horned god of the forest, plains and fields. He was often equated with the Roman god Inuus, and also with the Greek god Pan ....
, and the related forest spirits called Faun
Faun

In Roman mythology, fauns are place-spirits of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus ....
s.






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Fauna is all of the animal
Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
 life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora
Flora

In botany, flora has two meanings. The first meaning, flora of an area or of time period, refers to all plant life occurring in an area or time period, especially the naturally occurring or indigenous plant life....
.

Zoologists
Zoology

Zoology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of animals. The most common pronunciation of "zoology" is ; however, an alternative pronunciation is ....
 and paleontologists
Paleontology

File:Geological time spiral - sharper.pngPaleontology from Greek: pa?a??? "old, ancient", ??, ??t- "being, creature", and ????? "speech, thought" is the study of prehistory life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments ....
 use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert
Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert is a North American desert which straddles part of the United States-Mexico border and covers large parts of the U.S. states of Arizona and California and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California....
 fauna" or the "Burgess shale
Burgess Shale

The Burgess Shale Formation is one of the world's most celebrated fossil localities, and is famous for the exceptional preservation of the fossils found within it, in which the soft parts are preserved....
 fauna".

Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of faunal stage
Faunal stage

In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a Geologic record laid down in an single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition....
s, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils.

The name comes from Fauna
Fauna (goddess)

In Roman mythology, Fauna is an alternate name for:*Bona Dea, was a goddess of fertility, healing, virginity and women. She may also be known as Marica....
, a Roman fertility and earth goddess, the Roman god Faunus
Faunus

In Religion in ancient Rome and its Roman mythology, Faunus was the horned god of the forest, plains and fields. He was often equated with the Roman god Inuus, and also with the Greek god Pan ....
, and the related forest spirits called Faun
Faun

In Roman mythology, fauns are place-spirits of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus ....
s. All three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan
Pan (mythology)

Pan , in Ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, is the companion of the nymphs, god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music....
, and panis is the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 equivalent of fauna. Fauna is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used by Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
 in the title of his 1747 work Fauna Suecica.

Subdivisions of fauna


Infauna


Infauna are aquatic animals that live within the bottom substratum rather than on its surface. Bacteria and microalgae may also live in the interstices of bottom sediments. On average, infaunal animals become progressively rarer with increasing water depth and distance from shore, whereas bacteria show more constancy in abundance, tending toward one billion cells per milliliter of interstitial seawater. (Infauna are benthos that live buried in underwater mud.)

Macrofauna


Macrofauna are benthic or soil organisms which are at least one millimeter in length.Hi

Megafauna


Megafauna are large animals of any particular region or time. For example, Australian megafauna
Australian megafauna

Australian megafauna are a number of large animal species in Australia , often defined as species with body mass estimates of greater than 30 kilograms, or equal to or greater than 30% greater body mass than their closest living relatives....
.

Meiofauna


Meiofauna are small benthic invertebrate
Invertebrate

An invertebrate is an animal lacking a vertebral column. The group includes 98% of all animal species ? all animals except those in the Chordate subphylum vertebrate ....
s that live in both marine and fresh water environments
Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical factors of the environment....
. The term Meiofauna loosely defines a group of organism
Organism

In biology, an organism is any life thing . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimulus , reproduction, growth and developmental biology, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole....
s by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, rather than a taxonomic grouping. One environment for meiofauna is between grains of damp sand (see Mystacocarida
Mystacocarida

Mystacocarida are interstitial crustaceans, part of the meiobenthos. Their taxonomy is extremely conservative, superficially all mystacocarids look alike....
).

In practice these are metazoan animals that can pass unharmed through a 0.5 – 1 mm mesh
Mesh

Mesh consists of semi-permeable barrier made of connected strands of metal, fiber, or other flexible/ductile material. Mesh is similar to spider web or Net in that it has many attached or woven strands....
 but will be retained by a 30 – 45 µm mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from research
Research

Research is defined as human activity based on intellectual application in the investigation of matter. The primary purpose for applied research is discovery , interpretation , and the development of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of scientific matters of our world and the universe....
er to researcher. Whether an organism passes through a 1 mm mesh also depends upon whether it is alive or dead.

Mesofauna


Mesofauna are macroscopic soil invertebrates such as arthropod
Arthropod

Arthropods are animals belonging to the Scientific classification Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others....
s, earthworm
Earthworm

Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. The earthworm is the most known worm in America, and other countries....
s, and nematode
Nematode

The "roundworms" or "nematodes" are the most diverse phylum of body cavity, and one of the most diverse of all animals. Nematode species are very difficult to distinguish; over 80,000 have been described, of which over 15,000 are parasite....
s.

Microfauna


Microfauna are microscopic or very small animals (usually including protozoa
Protozoa

Protozoan are microorganisms classified as unicellular eukaryotes. While there is no exact definition of the term "protozoan", most scientists use the word to refer to a unicellular heterotrophic protist, such as an amoeba or a ciliate....
ns and very small animals such as rotifer
Rotifer

The rotifers make up a phylum of microscopic and near-microscopic body cavity animals. They were first described by Rev. John Harris in 1696 and other forms were described by Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1703....
s).

Other

Other terms include avifauna, which means "bird
Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
 fauna" and piscifauna (or ichthyofauna), which means "fish
Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
 fauna".

Fauna treatises


Classic faunas


  • Linnaeus, Carolus
    Carolus Linnaeus

    Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
    . Fauna Suecica. 1746


See also


  • Animal
    Animal

    Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
  • Biome
    Biome

    Biomes are Climateally and geographically defined areas of ecologically similar climatic conditions such as Community of plants, animals, and Soil biology, and are often referred to as ecosystems....
  • Flora
    Flora

    In botany, flora has two meanings. The first meaning, flora of an area or of time period, refers to all plant life occurring in an area or time period, especially the naturally occurring or indigenous plant life....
  • Fauna and Flora Preservation Society
    Fauna and Flora Preservation Society

    Fauna and Flora International , was founded in 1903 as the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire by a group of United Kingdom naturalists and United States statesmen in Africa....
  • Gene pool
    Gene pool

    In population genetics, a gene pool is the complete set of unique alleles in a species or population....
  • Genetic pollution
    Genetic pollution

    Genetic pollution is undesirable gene flow into wild populations. The term is usually associated with the gene flow from a Genetic engineering organism to a non GE organism; however, conservation biology and conservationists are using it to describe gene flow from a Domestication, feral, Introduced species or invasive species to a Wildlife...
  • Genetic erosion
    Genetic erosion

    Genetic erosion is a process whereby an already limited gene pool of an endangered species of plant or animal diminishes even more when individuals from the surviving population die off without getting a chance to meet and breed with others in their endangered Small population size....
  • Sustainability
    Sustainability

    Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the ability to maintain a certain process or state. It is now most frequently used in connection with biological and human systems....
  • Biodiversity
    Biodiversity

    Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems....
  • Ecology
    Ecology

    Ecology is the science study of the distribution and Abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their nature environment ....
  • Ecosystem
    Ecosystem

    An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical factors of the environment....
  • Earth Science
    Earth science

    Earth science , is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth . It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet....
  • Natural environment
    Natural environment

    The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, is a term that encompasses all life and non-living things occurring nature on Earth or some region thereof....
  • Nature
    Nature

    File:Jungle in Punjab.JPGNature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe....
  • Environmental movement
    Environmental movement

    The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation movement and green movement movements, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....