Free-living nematodes of the Mar Piccolo of Taranto (Ionian Sea, southern Italy), 2013-2014 in the framework of the Italian flagship project RITMARE. In June 2013 and April 2014, sampling was carried out at four sites by scuba divers who collected five virtually undisturbed sediment cores using polycarbonate sample tubes (12.7 cm I.D. with a sample area of 127 cm2). In laboratory, one sediment core was subsampled by means of 3 cut-off plastic syringes (2.7 cm I.D., surface area of 5.72 cm2, 0-10 cm top sediment) in order to obtain three pseudoreplicates.