Oceans influence the climate of our earth and sustain livelihoods of millions of people globally. From land-ocean boundary to deep-sea, organismal biodiversity is key to sustaining ocean ecosystems. Benthic meiofauna, a group of metazoans, play critical roles in ecosystem processes from coastal to deep abyssal environments, such as global carbon and nitrogen cycling, microbial facilitation, trophic interactions, etc. In this session, we welcome submissions in domains of benthic meiofauna biogeography and patterns across ocean basin scales, benthic meiofauna linked ecosystem functioning in coastal habitats such as mangroves, estuaries and lagoons and deep-sea habitats, as well as their role in shaping structure and functions of microbial communities such as bacteria and thereby influencing elemental cycling such as carbon. Studies that use benthic meiofauna to understand trophic level food webs using modeling approaches are also welcome in this session. Submissions pertaining to emerging areas of benthic meiofauna research that integrate new tools and approaches including next-generation sequencing to understand their community level patterns across global coastal ecosystems are equally encouraged.