During the past two decades, the round goby Apollonia melanostoma (=Neogobius melanostomus) has expanded its range via shipping transport and canals, extending north and west from the Ponto-Caspian region of Eurasia and to the North American Great Lakes. Exotic populations of the round goby have been very successful in the Baltic Sea and the Great Lakes regions, exerting significant ecological ...

The Caspian Sea is heavily polluted due to industrial and agricultural effluents as well as extraction of oil and gas reserves. Microbial communities can influence the fate of contaminants and nutrients. However, insight into the microbial ecology of the Caspian Sea significantly lags behind other marine systems. Here we describe microbial biomass, diversity and composition in sediments collect...

this study evaluates changes in species composition, catch, and cpue of three species of kilkas in the caspian sea from 1961 to 2009. the effects of fluctuations in sea level rise and fall on the catch of kilka as well as the impacts of a recent invasion by mnemiopsis leidyi (ctenophora) were assessed in terms of species composition and cpue of kilkas in the iranian coastal region of the caspia...

The worldwide occurrence of complex climate-induced ecological shifts in marine systems is one of the major challenges in sustainable bio-resources management. The occurrence of ecological environment-driven shifts was studied in the Southern Caspian Sea using the "shiftogram" method on available fisheries-related (i.e. commercially important bentho-pelagic fish stocks) ecological and climatic ...

In 2010, H14 influenza A viruses were recovered from clinically normal sea ducks in the United States. These are the first H14 isolates recovered in the Western Hemisphere and represent the only documented H14 influenza A viruses isolated since the original isolates were recovered from near the Caspian Sea during 1982.

The Caspian frisian roach (Rutilus frisii kutum), economically a very important fish species in Iran, is propagated in fishponds, reared into the rivers in fingerling size and then harvested from the Caspian Sea in adult stage. We found six monogenean parasites on the Caspian frisian roach including five Dactylogyrus spp. on fingerlings cultured in fishponds and rivers and two Dactylogyrus spp....

upwelling areas in the ocean are important places for fishing as nutrients can be transported from deeper area to the near surface region. in this study, the upwelling in the eastern coastal area of the caspian sea for 2004 was studied using coherens, a three-dimensional ocean model. in order to simulate the circulation in the caspian sea, the gridded fields were chosen as 0.046 × 0.046 degrees...