Why is the intertidal zone a good place to investigate ecological community structure?
The intertidal zone has a series of ecological communities… from the splash zone through the low intertidal. At the upper end of each zone abiotic (physical) factors are important in the zonation such as wave action, tidal action, influx of salt and fresh water, amount of time out of water. At the lower end of each zone biotic factors play a more important role such as predation, competition, space requirements. So in a relatively narrow horizontal distance you can go through extremes of physical factors and many biological interactions at the same time.
