Neglected area of meiobenthos: bibliometric analysis in the status of research on hyporheic meiofauna

Abstract

Studies on freshwater meiofauna are still enigmatic. This field of research is relatively neglected because this topic is not as increasing as the others, creating a gap in this area. The deficit of knowledge and surveys impose a barrier on new research and researchers to emerge and on the increase of scientific interest in this area. This paper contains a brief review of what already exists on freshwater meiofauna worldwide, focusing on increasing knowledge on this topic and making this little-known area of meiofauna a common study field in science. The methodology involved a bibliographic survey from the Web of Science (WOS) bibliographic database. The search was performed by document title, keywords, and abstract, highlighting meiofauna (or meiobenthos) and hyporheic zone (or hyporheos). The results showed 28 documents on hyporheic meiofauna worldwide, mainly concentrated in Germany. The few articles highlighted that the lack of research on the hyporheic meiofauna community, its ecology, taxonomy, and biology is evident. It is hoped that this bibliometric review can be used as an alert about this area of meiofauna that is so important but at the same time is neglected, having a very exclusive group of authors and works, being of extreme importance different directions of research that involves hyporheic meiofauna in order to a better understanding of this fauna importance, ecosystemic services and ecology.