What are two other physical factors that are important in estuaries?
Variability in water temperature and reduced visibility due to large amounts of suspended sediments are two physical factors that influence estuaries and the organisms that live in them. 22. Describe how estuarine organisms are adapted to deal with salinity. Maintaining internal salinity balance is one of the major challenges faced by estuarine organisms. Most estuarine organisms are euryhaline—they can tolerate a wide range of salinities. A small number of stenohaline species—species that can tolerate only a narrow range of salinities—inhabit estuaries, but are usually very limited in their distribution. 23. Describe osmoconformers in estuaries. Osmoconformers maintain osmotic balance simply by allowing their body fluids to match the salinity of the surrounding water. Examples include many molluscs and polychaete worms. 24. Describe how osmoregulators use active transport to maintain osmotic balance? Many estuarine organisms are osmoregulators—they keep the salt concentration of their
