Russian ( Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), Persian ( A. persicus) and Siberian ( A. baerii) sturgeons are closely related 'Ponto-Caspian' species. Investigation of their population structure is an important problem, the solution of which determines measures for conservation of these species. According to previous studies, 'baerii-like' mitotypes were found in the Caspian Sea among 35% of Russian stu...

In this study, we investigate the sources of moisture (and moisture for precipitation) over the Danube River Basin (DRB) by means of a Lagrangian approach using the FLEXPART V9.0 particle dispersion model together with ERA-Interim reanalysis data to track changes in atmospheric moisture over 10-day trajectories. This approach computes the budget of evaporation-minus-precipitation by calculating...

Welcome to our international conference on rapid sea-level change. While concern about sea-level rise is global, our host country the Islamic Republic of Iran and the neighbouring Caspian countries have a concern of their own. Here, Caspian sea level rose a hundred times as fast as in the world’s oceans. Whereas oceanic sealevel rose 13 centimeter during the whole twentieth century, the Caspian...

The genus Alburnoides Jeitteles, 1861 in Iran is reviewed, and diagnoses are presented for all eight recognized species. Alburnoides eichwaldii, A. holciki, A. idignensis, A. namaki, A. nicolausi, A. petrubanarescui, A. qanati and A. tabarestanensis are considered valid and three new species are described: Alburnoides coadi sp. n., from Namrud River in Kavir basin, A. parhami sp. n., from Atrak...

We present here the findings from a study of the microbiome of the southern basin of the Caspian Sea, the largest water body on Earth disconnected from any ocean and a brackish inland sea. By high-throughput metagenomics, we were able to reconstruct the genomes of representative microbes. The gross community structure (at the phylum level) was different from the structure of typical marine and ...

This paper is focused on the discussion of the exact age, and environmental setting of the ‘Khvalynian’ Transgression of the Caspian Sea with the use of novel radiometric, isotopic evidence and GIS-linked modelling. Based on this evidence the Khvalynian transgression is viewed as coeval with the warm Late Glacial episodes in the higher latitudes, reaching its peak at 13.6 11.8 ka. During that p...

The predatory cladoceran Cercopagis pengoi has extended its range over the past decade from the Ponto-Caspian basin into the Baltic Sea and the Laurentian Great Lakes. This study employs mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence analysis to elucidate the invasion corridors exploited during this range expansion. The Caspian and Black Sea populations of C. pengoi exhibit marked genetic divergence, enabl...

the caspian sea as the biggest surrounded water body (lake) in the world is bordered by the states of azerbaijan, russia, iran, kazakhstan and turkmenistan. urban development in addition to the increase of industrial and oil production activities (oil refinery and petrochemical plants) in the northern and eastern regions of caspian sea in recent years have caused entrance of high amount of oily...

Current taxonomy of western Eurasian trout leaves a number of questions open; it is not clear to what extent some species are distinct genetically and morphologically. The purpose of this paper was to explore phylogeography and species boundaries in freshwater and anadromous trout from the drainages of the Black and the Caspian Seas (Ponto-Caspian). We studied morphology and mitochondrial phylo...