The phylum Nematoda, or roundworms, encompasses a diverse group of microscopic worms, that occur in every sediment on earth. There are freeliving species, feeding on dissolved organic matter, bacteria, algae, fungae , plant roots or predating other small creatures in the sediment. And there is an enormous variety of parasitic species, parasitizing all animals and plants imaginable.
The freeliving species in soils and underwater sediments are often the most numerous group of animals found there. Still, even in the Netherlands, where there are enthusiasts studying every sort of organism found, not much is known about the nematode species occurring here. Attention is paid to some plant feeding species that can cause serious economic damage. But the large majority of the freeliving species remain largely unstudied.
In 2020 i started taking sediment samples from the dutch coast to study the freeliving marine nematode species in them. The results are published here. I will try to photograph and document all the species encountered and hopefully, in time, this site will become a reference for identification of the dutch species.
For the taxonomy i follow the naming used in the Nemys World database of Nematodes, maintained by the Marine Biology Research Group of Ghent university, Belgium (https://nemys.ugent.be/). This is also the main resource of taxonomic literature used for species identification.
Contact: aende211(at)xs4ll.nl