The marine 'great wall' of China: local and broad scale ecological impacts of coastal infrastructure on intertidal macrobenthic communities
Aim Increasing areas of artificial infrastructure are being built along coastlines for purposes of land reclamation and coastal defences. Impacts of these structures on intertidal communities could be severe. Here, we tested the hypothesis that artificial structures can alter intertidal community composition by providing hard substrata for rocky intertidal species, and can serve as 'stepping stones' that facilitate broad scale migration of rocky intertidal species and may weaken a phylogeographic transition.