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...

In this paper we study the topology of the configuration space of a device with d legs (alias ’roach’) such that at most k of them are allowed to be off the ground. We suggest control strategies providing that this roach moves stably forward starting from a ’maximal’ subset of admissible initial positions of legs. The meaning of the term ’maximal’ will be explained below. Advantages of the sugg...

More than 10,000 Caspian seals (Phoca caspica) were reported dead in the Caspian Sea during spring and summer 2000. We performed necropsies and extensive laboratory analyses on 18 seals, as well as examination of the pattern of strandings and variation in weather in recent years, to identify the cause of mortality and potential contributory factors. The monthly stranding rate in 2000 was up to ...

Environmental change may affect predator-prey interactions in lakes through deterioration of visual conditions affecting foraging success of visually oriented predators. Environmental change in lakes includes an increase in humic matter causing browner water and reduced visibility, affecting the behavioural performance of both piscivores and prey. We studied diurnal patterns of prey selection i...