The objective of the current study was determined chemical composition (including protein, lipid, ash and moisture) and content of minerals (Zn, Mn, Fe, Cu, Cr, Ca, Na, Mg, Mo, P, Se, K, I and F) in five fish species from the South Caspian Sea. The chemical analysis revealed that the protein content of common kilka, Caspian kutum, common carp, pike perch and golden grey mullet was 18.35%, 21.39...

Understanding historical roles of species in ecosystems can be crucial for assessing long term human impacts on environments, providing context for management or restoration objectives, and making conservation evaluations of species status. In most cases limited historical abundance data impedes quantitative investigations, but harvested species may have long-term data accessible from hunting r...

Ponto-Caspian gobies are a flock of five invasive fish species that have colonized freshwaters and brackish waters in Europe and North America. One of them, the round goby Neogobius melanostomus, figures among the 100 worst invaders in Europe. Current methods to detect the presence of Ponto-Caspian gobies involve catching or sighting the fish. These approaches are labor intense and not very sen...

The Ponto-Caspian (Black and Caspian seas) brackish-water fauna represents a special case of the endemic diversification in world's ancient lakes; it also involves a hotspot of continental diversity in the predominantly marine mysid crustaceans. We explored the origins and history of the mysid diversification in a phylogenetic analysis of some 20 endemic Ponto-Caspian species mainly of the genu...

In the present investigation flocculation of dissolved Cu, Zn, Pb, Ni and Mn in a series of mixtures with salinities ranging from 1.5 to 9.5% during mixing of Talar river water with the Caspian Sea water was studied. The flocculation trend of Zn (87.22%) >Mn (45.31%) >Pb (39.09%) >Cu (36.58%)>Ni (12.70%) indicates that Cu, Zn, Pb and Mn have non-conservative behavior and Ni has relatively conse...

1.1 Caspian Sea The complex history of the Caspian Sea formation has lead to a variety of different habitats. Like Australia, the Caspian Sea became isolated thousands of years ago (Plate 1). This isolation led to the speciation of many rare animals in particular the sturgeon. The Caspian Sea is the biggest enclosed body of water on Earth, having an even larger area than that of the American Gr...