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• Infauna: 
• live within the sediment, mostly soft bottom; 
• mostly clams and worms (polychaetes) 
• borrow tubes for food scavenging and oxygen supply
  
  
  
• Epifauna: 
• live on top of sediment, soft bottom or rocks, attached or free
• about 80% of larger zoobenthos; hard bottoms more diverse
• prominent examples: corals, mussels, starfish, seaearchin, sponges, barnacles
  
  
  
• Epibenthos or demersal animals: live in association with seafloor but temporarily swim up into the water (prawns, shrimp, cod)

 
• Size classes of zoobenthos:
• Macrofauna (also macrobenthos): animals retained by 1.0 mm sieve; largest animals such as starfish, mussels, corals, sponges
• Meiofauna (also meiobenthos): animals 0.1 to 1.0 mm in size, often 0.45 to 1.0 mm (depending on textbook); small animals commonly found in sand or mud, e.g. small molluscs, worms, copepods
• Microfauna (also microbenthos): smaller than 0.45 mm; mostly protozoa (ciliates, thecate amoeba, foraminifera)
• The interstitial community: „Sandlückensystem“, explored by Adolf Remane (Kiel, Germany). Animals that live within the water canals between the sand grains; 
• mostly microfauna; small body size to „fit into canals“
• long and slim bodies, length-to-width ratio up to 100:1 (normal 3-10:1)
• flexible bodies because the interstitial room barely provide streight canals
• organs to attach temporarily to sand grains to avoid being washed out 
• often ciliated body surface
• special forms occur here, such as single-individual Bryozoa, which normally only occur as colonial forms
• some only recently discovered phyla only occur in the interstitium
  
  
• For some nice photographs of meiobenthos click here