This paper looks at coastal and estuarine ecosystems in terms of their unique biodiversity characteristics and the implications of these characteristics for management. With the exception of coral and other reef communities, coastal and estuarine systems are generally low in species diversity. But estuaries are typically dominated by strong aperiodic physical forces (e.g. salinity changes due t...

1. Ecologically significant evolutionary change, occurring over tens of generations or fewer, is now widely documented in nature. These findings counter the long-standing assumption that ecological and evolutionary processes occur on different time-scales, and thus that the study of ecological processes can safely assume evolutionary stasis. Recognition that substantial evolution occurs on ecol...

seed production, as well as other economical and ecological attributes, is an important character in grasses. knowledge on the genetic diversity of seed yield and yield components on iranian tall fescue accessions, as a high productive and adaptive grass is limited. this experiment was conducted to investigate the genetic diversity of seed yield and seed components, determine relationships betw...

Biological diversity within species can be an important driver of population and ecosystem functioning. Until now, such within-species diversity effects have been attributed to underlying variation in DNA sequence. However, within-species differences, and thus potentially functional biodiversity, can also be created by epigenetic variation. Here, we show that epigenetic diversity increases the ...

Protists have fascinated microbiologists since their discovery nearly 350 years ago. These single-celled, eukaryotic species span an incredible range of sizes, forms, and functions and, despite their generally diminutive size, constitute much of the genetic diversity within the domain Eukarya. Protists in marine ecosystems play fundamental ecological roles as primary producers, consumers, decom...

carnivores play great ecological roles in ecosystems because of placing on top of the food pyramid. food habits of large carnivores are associated with important ecological features such as spatial pattern, movement, habitat selection, social structure, geographical distribution and reproductive success. accordingly, in this study was used scat analysis to determine the diet of persian leopards...