fauna

The term "fauna" has two distinct meanings, depending on the context.

Biological Context

In biology, fauna refers to all the animal life present in a particular region or time period. This term is often used in conjunction with "flora," which refers to the plant life, and "funga" or "fungi," which refer to the fungal life. Fauna is a collective term for animals and is used by zoologists and paleontologists to describe the typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, such as the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess Shale fauna"234.

There are various subdivisions of fauna based on the environment or habitat, including:

• Epifauna: Animals living on the bottom substratum of a water body.
• Infauna: Animals living within the bottom substratum.
• Meiofauna: Small benthic invertebrates.
• Mesofauna: Macroscopic soil animals.
• Microfauna: Microscopic or very small animals.
• Stygofauna: Animals living in groundwater systems or aquifers.
• Troglofauna: Animals adapted to living in caves2.

Database Context

In a completely different context, Fauna is also the name of a distributed serverless database. This database combines the flexibility of document databases with the power of relational databases, offering features such as automatic scaling, zero-configuration clustering, and a serverless architecture. Fauna provides various pricing plans tailored to different needs, from startup teams to enterprise-level applications, with features including multi-factor authentication, event streaming, and customizable throughput15.