The most important primary producers of rocky shores are macroalgae. The present study investigated the
temporal–spatial changes, the percentage of coverage and the influence of abiotic factors on macroalgae
on rocky shores of southern Caspian Sea. Ten sampling stations were selected in the natural and artificial
rocky shores from Astara to Babolsar. Sampling lasted for one year and took place every 2 months from
September 2013 to July 2014 using a 50×50 quadrate sampler. Epibenthic macroalgae consisted of 2
genus, Cladophora and Entromorpha, from green algae and one genus, Laurenica, from red algae. The
average water temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and water conductivity were 16.48 °C,
9.87ppt, 8.27, 9.89 mg/l and 16.52 m/s, respectively. According to the results, the maximum algal
coverage was observed in September (70.50 %) and the minimum coverage was observed in January
(21.50 %). Results of one-way ANOVA indicated that the mean of algal coverage in various months of the
year were significantly different (P<0.05). One-way ANOSIM ecosystem similarity test indicated that the
coverage rates of the stations were homologous and similar. The results also showed that temperature has
a significant effect on macroalgae coverage ratio on rocky shores in the southern Caspian Sea.

Neritas are among the most dominant groups of Gastropoda in the Persian Gulf. There is no previous study in relation to molecular and phylogeny of Neritas in the study area. The molecular identification of Nerita species have been studied for the first time in the northern rocky coastal zones of Persian Gulf during 2013 and 2014. After morphological identifications of species, DNA extraction, amplifying partial of cytochrome oxidase COI and 16S rRNA and sequencing procedure were done in the laboratory. In this study, 6 COI and 6 16S rRNA sequences, belonging to 3 species, were obtained. Also, phylogeny analyses with drawing phylogeny trees of Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian were done using MEGA6 and BEAST softwares. Morphological and molecular identification results were similar for 2 species and dissimilar for one species. This discrepancy shows that a combination of morphological and molecular studies is more reliable for species identification than either of them solely. The results also showed that Nerita species are monophyletic.