The most diverse and numerous group of animals, the invertebrates, form a biological community more complex in species numbers and relationships than any other terrestrial community. Invertebrate animals are located nearly everywhere and consequently serve very important functions in the ecosystems which they inhabit.
Invertebrates are responsible for pollinating many flowering plants.
They are the leading consumers of vegetation, initiators of successional trends, the leading consumers of other invertebrates, recyclers of dead organic material, regulators of element cycles, turners of the soil, and food for higher animals. However, they have generally not been fully studied, mainly due to there being so many species, as well as their small size and obscure habitats, particularly those that inhabit the soil or bottom sediments of lakes and ponds. Representatives of most land and freshwater invertebrate groups are known to occur throughout the province. A general review of the collections of the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History and some published lists suggests that there are more than 15,000 species of land and freshwater invertebrates in the province.