Predicting the strength and context-dependency of species interactions across multiple scales is a core area in ecology. This is especially challenging in the marine environment, where populations of most predators and prey are generally open, because of their pelagic larval phase, and recruitment of both is highly variable. In this study we use a comparative-experimental approach on small and ...

Populations of intertidal species span a steep environmental gradient driven by differences in emersion time. In spite of strong differential selection on traits related to this gradient, the small spatial scale over which differences occur may prevent local adaptation, and instead may favor a single intermediate phenotype, or nongenetic mechanisms of differentiation. Here I examine whether a c...

Residents in the marine intertidal, the zone where terrestrial and marine habitats converge, inhabit an environment that is subject to both the 24-h day and night daily rhythm of the terrestrial earth and also the 12.4-h ebb and flow of the tidal cycle. Here, we investigate the relative contribution of the daily and tidal cycle on the physiology of intertidal mussels, Mytilus californianus, by ...

The potential of ecosystem engineers to modify the structure and dynamics of food webs has recently been hypothesised from a conceptual point of view. Empirical data on the integration of ecosystem engineers and food webs is however largely lacking. This paper investigates the hypothesised link based on a field sampling approach of intertidal biogenic aggregations created by the ecosystem engin...

In the marine environment, both external fertilization and settlement are critical processes linking adult and early juvenile life-history phases. The success of both processes can be tightly linked in organisms lacking a larval dispersive phase. This review focuses on synchronous gamete release (= spawning) in fucoid algae. These brown macroalgae are important components of temperate intertida...

Structure of intertidal and subtidal benthic macrofauna in the northeastern region of Todos os Santos Bay (TSB), northeast Brazil, was investigated during a period of two years. Relationships with environmental parameters were studied through uniand multivariate statistical analyses, and the main distributional patterns shown to be especially related to sediment type and content of organic frac...

Rocky shores are one of the most important habitats of marine environment in coastal areas. They host marine organisms including seaweeds because of existence of strong and stable substrate for their growths. Intertidal rocky shores are a prominent feature on coastal areas of Qeshm Island located at the northern part of Strait of Hormuz. In order to study biomass of seaweeds on rocky intertidal...

While intertidal habitats are often productive, species-rich environments, they are also harsh and highly dynamic. Organisms that live in these habitats must possess morphological and physiological adaptations that enable them to do so. Intertidal fishes are generally small, often lack scales, and the diverse families represented in intertidal habitats often show convergence into a few general ...

The distribution of the blue mussel Mytilus edulis spans a steep gradient of environmental stress between intertidal and subtidal habitats, and can provide insight into population-scale patterns and underlying processes of variation in physiological tolerances. I conducted a 7 wk reciprocal transplant of mussels between the upper intertidal and subtidal portion of their natural depth distributi...