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...

We investigated physiological traits responsible for determining the tide-height and latitudinal distributions of Northeastern Pacific Nucella congeners. First, we determined the thermotolerances of two species of intertidal dogwhelks, N. ostrina and N. canaliculata, which co-occur on the Oregon coast. We found that N. ostrina, which are distributed higher on the shore, and thus experience high...

Recent advances in quantifying biochemical and cellular-level responses to thermal stress have facilitated a new exploration of the role of climate and climate change in driving intertidal community and population ecology. To fruitfully connect these disciplines, we first need to understand what the body temperatures of intertidal organisms are under field conditions, and how they change in spa...

The North Atlantic intertidal community provides a rich set of organismal and environmental material for the study of ecological genetics. Clearly defined environmental gradients exist at multiple spatial scales: there are broad latitudinal trends in temperature, meso-scale changes in salinity along estuaries, and smaller scale gradients in desiccation and temperature spanning the intertidal ra...

Saltmarshes in subtropical Queensland, Australia, are assumed to provide habitat for fish, yet there has been no evidence as to whether fish actually occur on the intertidal flats that constitute the main area of marshes. Nor has there been any assessment of differences in fish use of vegetated habitat and the extensive unvegetated saltpans that occur naturally and because of human activities. ...

The Bay of Prony, South of New Caledonia, represents a unique serpentinite-hosted hydrothermal field due to its coastal situation. It harbors both submarine and intertidal active sites, discharging hydrogen- and methane-rich alkaline fluids of low salinity and mild temperature through porous carbonate edifices. In this study, we have extensively investigated the bacterial and archaeal communiti...

We report the results of a reciprocal transplant experiment that tested plasticity in the heat shock response (HSR) of an intertidal mussel, Mytilus californianus (Conrad), in its natural habitat. We predicted that mussels inhabiting the upper edge of their vertical distribution, the high intertidal mussel bed, would display physiological signatures of greater thermal stress, specifically highe...

Intertidal macroalgae Fucus and Laminaria experience seasonally fluctuating inorganic N supply. This study examined the effects of long-term N deprivation, recovery following N resupply, and effects of elevated ammonium and nitrate exposure on N acquisition in intertidal algae using manipulations of N supply in tank culture. Over 15 weeks of N deprivation, internal N and nitrate reductase activ...