Eleven species of Capitellidae (Annelida: Polychaeta) belonging to eight genera are reported from the subtidal and intertidal of the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Three species, Mediomastus ambiseta, M. californiensis and Notomastus hemipodus, are found in highest abundances and are widespread in subtidal and intertidal environments. A taxonomic key to these species is included.

Citation: Avó AP, Daniell TJ, Neilson R, Oliveira S, Branco J and Adão H (2017) DNA Barcoding and Morphological Identification of Benthic Nematodes Assemblages of Estuarine Intertidal Sediments: Advances in Molecular Tools for Biodiversity Assessment. Front. Mar. Sci. 4:66. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00066 DNA Barcoding and Morphological Identification of Benthic Nematodes Assemblages of Estuarine...

Species range boundaries are determined by a variety of factors of which climate is one of the most influential. As a result, climate change is expected to have a profound effect on organisms and ecosystems. However, the impacts of weather and climate are frequently modified by multiple nonclimatic factors. Therefore, the role of these nonclimatic factors needs to be examined in order to unders...

The population development of the 1998 year class of the bivalve Macoma balthica was studied by repeated sampling of a tidal flat area in the eastern Dutch Wadden Sea from May 1998 to August 2000. The juveniles migrated twice, once in mid-1998 from their primary settlement locations in the low sandy intertidal to the nursery in the high intertidal (spring migration, 25% of all juvenile M. balth...

Many theories of consumer control of communities have come from studies conducted in relatively benign, temperate zone rocky intertidal systems. Here, we examine gastropod grazing and the maintenance of bare space on a dry, wind-swept rocky shore of Patagonia, Argentina. Two limpet species are the primary intertidal grazers. Siphonaria lessoni dominates mid and high intertidal zones, while Nace...

The ability to withstand high summer temperatures is an extremely important determinant of species distributions in the intertidal zone; most marine organisms cannot live intertidally because of the harsh conditions experienced during aerial emersion. The members of some species, though, live both intertidally and subtidally, and their physiological tolerance to stressors may differ depending o...

BACKGROUND Biological invasions affecting rocky intertidal zonation patterns, yield information on species interactions. In the Bay of Antofagasta, northern Chile, the non-indigenous tunicate Pyura praeputialis, originally from Australia, has invaded (in the past century or so) and monopolized a major portion of the mid-intertidal rocky shore, displacing upshore the native mussel Perumytilus pu...

Although previous studies have demonstrated that heat-shock protein 70 (Hsp70) can be induced by environmental stress, little is known about natural variation in this response over short time scales. We examined how Hsp70 levels varied over days to weeks in two intertidal snail species of the genus Tegula: Sampling was conducted both under naturally changing environmental conditions and in diff...

Maintaining food production while sustaining productive ecosystems is among the central challenges of our time, yet, it has been for millennia. Ancient clam gardens, intertidal rock-walled terraces constructed by humans during the late Holocene, are thought to have improved the growing conditions for clams. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the beach slope, intertidal height, and biomass a...

Evidence is accumulating rapidly showing that temperature and other climatic variables are driving many ecological processes. At the same time, recent research has highlighted the role of parasitism in the dynamics of animal populations and the structure of animal communities. Here, the likely interactions between climate change and parasitism are discussed in the context of intertidal ecosyste...