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Responses of South Caspian coastal foraminifera to warming: spatial patterns and assemblage shifts

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Abstract

This study investigated the spatial distribution of coastal foraminifera at four stations, identifying seven distinct species representing five genera and three families, with Ammonia beccarii caspica as the dominant species. The Bandar Gaz station exhibited the highest density, species richness, evenness, and Shannon diversity. Consequently, Bandar Gaz was selected for a controlled microcosm experiment examining benthic foraminiferal community responses to increased water temperature (24 °C, 27 °C, and 30 °C) over 60 days. While the highest total density and evenness were observed at 30 °C, the total number of species and Margalef and Shannon indices did not significantly differ among treatments. Temperature changes significantly altered community structure through shifts in species dominance. Ammonia species displayed resilience and increased dominance with higher temperatures, replacing other species. Elphidium advenum density decreased significantly at 30 °C, while Ammonia beccarri and Ammonia tepida increased in dominance with rising temperatures. These findings highlight temperature-driven alterations in foraminiferal assemblages, with implications for coastal ecosystem monitoring in the context of climate change.

Data availability

The datasets during and/or analyzed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that improved the quality of the manuscript.

Funding

This work is based upon research founded by Iranian National Science Foundation (INSF) under project NO. 40266240.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Iranian National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences, Tehran, 1411813389, Iran

    Hossein Bagheri & Mehrshad Taheri

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  1. Hossein Bagheri
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  2. Mehrshad Taheri
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Contributions

Hossein Bagheri: writing—original draft preparation, methodology, writing-review and editing. Mehrshad Taheri: methodology, software, writing-review and editing, visualization. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to
Hossein Bagheri.

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Bagheri, H., Taheri, M. Responses of South Caspian coastal foraminifera to warming: spatial patterns and assemblage shifts.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38207-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38207-1

Keywords

  • Caspian sea
  • Temperature
  • Foraminifera
  • Sediments

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