2025/12/30 by Dzmitry Lukashanets, Nataliia Iakovenko, Diego Fontaneto +13 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Aquatic Ecosystems and Phytoplankton Dynamics #Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology #Tardigrade Biology and Ecology
paper · pdf · doi:10.3897/bdj.13.e171929
openalex created_date 2025/12/30 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/16
Background: Limno-terrestrial rotifers, particularly those of the order Bdelloidea, inhabit bryophytes, lichens, soils and other periodically moist terrestrial habitats. Despite their high abundance in all latitudinal zones, these rotifers remain poorly documented in biodiversity databases due to difficulties in preservation and morphological identification. As a result, the current knowledge of their global distribution is still highly fragmented and geographically biased, with the majority of species records concentrated in Europe (where the experts mostly collected material). Many regions like north-eastern Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia remain under-represented in current knowledge on distribution of limno-terrestrial rotifers. Recent studies suggested that Bdelloidea exhibit distinct biogeographical patterns and potentially high levels of cryptic diversity and endemism, challenging the traditional view of the omnipresence of all microscopic taxa. Comprehensive, georeferenced occurrence data are essential to advance our understanding of bdelloid biodiversity and distribution, yet such data are still scarce in global platforms like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). New information: The dataset provides new, georeferenced data on the occurrence of rotifer species inhabiting limno-terrestrial habitats worldwide. For the first time, occurrence records for 48 rotifer species (including nominal taxonomic 'subspecies') are published in GBIF.In particular, the dataset significantly expands the information on the distribution ranges of the bdelloid rotifers (order Bdelloidea) in GBIF. We contributed 5,651 new occurrence records of bdelloids rotifers, increasing the number of records in GBIF by 47.5% (or by 61.6% when considering only previously georeferenced records).Moreover, we add 394 new records to the faunas of 49 of 56 studied countries, in 17 of which limno-terrestrial rotifers were studied for the first time.Additionally, for 19 countries, records of bdelloid rotifers are now available in GBIF for the first time.