Coastal vegetation comprises a number of coastal specialists and terrestrial generalists. It remains unclear how they persist on disturbed and undisturbed coastal conditions. We tested the hypothesis that coastal specialists may be superior to terrestrial generalists on supratidal zones of coasts, but their superiority can be influenced by human disturbances. Eight separate sandy coasts of the ...

In this study, the relationship between annual sunspot number (ASN) and annual precipitation totals (APT) has been investigated over the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea by using two statistical methods: contingency tables and cross-correlation function. Only Bushehr and Jask stations (270 mm and 140 mm mean APT) have long term monthly precipitation records started instrumentall...

The coastal zone is a complex environment in which a variety of forcing factors interact causing shoreline evolution. Coastal managers seek to predict coastal evolution and to identify regions vulnerable to erosion. Here, a Bayesian network is developed to identify the primary factors influencing decadal-scale shoreline evolution of European coasts and to reproduce the observed evolution trends...

Field surveys have reported a global shift in harbour porpoise distribution in European waters during the last 15 years, including a return to the Atlantic coasts of France. In this study, we analyzed genetic polymorphisms at a fragment of the mitochondrial control region (mtDNA CR) and 7 nuclear microsatellite loci, for 52 animals stranded and by-caught between 2000 and 2010 along the Atlantic...

On July 2010, a single specimen of Pteragogus pelycus was captured by gillnets along the coasts of Alexandria, Egypt (approximate position 31°14′N, 29°55′E) between 15 and 25 m of depth. This observation represents the first confirmed record of this species from the North African coasts.

We studied germination behaviors and persistence mechanism of wild Glehnia littoralis, a typical coastal species at temperate sandy coasts of the North Pacific Ocean, and tested the hypothesis that the coastal plants may have evolved special seeds adapting to the coasts, by which they recruit and persist easily, occupying the coasts as ideal habitats. In the Shandong Peninsula, China, we invest...