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Journal of the Geological Society; 1983; v. 140; issue.1; p. 39-46;
DOI: 10.1144/gsjgs.140.1.0039
© 1983 Geological Society of London

Article

Osmotic regulation and the evolution of brackish- and fresh-water faunas

P. C. Croghan

Present-day brackish-water areas contain a variety of animal species with differing abilities to adapt to dilute media and many studies on the mechanisms of adaptation to dilute media have been made using these species. However, many of these areas are unstable in composition, small in volume and geologically transitory and thus hardly present a likely avenue for large-scale evolutionary processes. Many of these areas are relatively poor in numbers of species and this can be interpreted as indicating that speciation has not proceeded to equilibrium. Large-scale and geologically long-lived brackish-water areas, resulting from continental drift, such as the Sarmatic Sea, may have provided the main types of situation in which the evolution of brackish- and fresh-water faunas has occurred and from where species have become dispersed into present-day localized niches.




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