Artificial water-level fluctuations (WLF) seriously threaten the biodiversity and functioning of littoral zones in lake ecosystems. The use artificial floating islands (AFI) to compensate for deleterious effects WLF on habitats has been increasing interest environmental managers. Yet, ecological efficiency this solution is still very poorly documented. AFI are usually designed as simple vegetat...

Europe has a large number of lakes, many of them lie in densely settled areas. For instance, Germany has 1073 lakes with a surface area greater than 0.5 km2, surrounded by lakeshore habitats of appr. 11 000 km. The lakeshore habitats are of outstanding significance for biodiversity, ecosystem function as well as a variety of human uses. In this paper we give an operational definition of the lak...

The rocky intertidal zone of central Chile compnses a diverse array of invertebrate and vertebrate (i.e. birds, fish, humans) predators In this system, like in most temperate rocky shores, predation by small 'terrestrial' mammals such as mice and rats has been largely overlooked. This study documents predation on intertidal organisms by Norway rats Rattus norvegicus in a marine preserve in Las ...

The activity and community structure of aerobic methanotrophic communities were investigated at methane seeps (pockmarks) in the littoral and profundal zones of an oligotrophic freshwater lake (Lake Constance, Germany). Measurements of potential methane oxidation rates showed that sediments inside littoral pockmarks are hot spots of methane oxidation. Potential methane oxidation rates at littor...

Littoral cell angioma is a rare vascular tumor of the spleen that was described by Falk et al. in 1991. Because of the limited number, untypical imaging manifestations, and lack of knowledge on this tumor type, these tumors are often misdiagnosed. In most cases, the tumor presents with multiple small hypoattenuating nodules in the spleen with delayed enhancement. However, solitary littoral cell...

All fungi in the class Lichinomycetes are lichen-forming and exclusively associate with cyanobacteria. Two closely related maritime species of the genus Lichina (L. confinis and L. pygmaea) show similar distribution ranges in the Northeast Atlantic, commonly co-occurring at the same rocky shores but occupying different littoral zones. By means of 16S rRNA and phycocyanin operon markers we studi...