ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the spectrum of habitats in coastal waters that have been colonized by insects, and enumerates some of the unanswered questions about how the insects have managed to adapt to a highly stressful environment. It provides a general entomological inventory of the most familiar kinds of coastal habitat. The number of hexapod species known from marine waters near land is considerably greater than the very few known pelagic species. The littoral zone is not a single habitat but rather a series of distinct habitats forming distinctive zones roughly parallel to the line separating the ocean from the land. Mangroves are encountered along tropical and subtropical seashores, where they form intertidal forests. The most abundant species inhabiting the decomposing material at the high tide line on many beaches are species of Collembola. The insect orders best represented are Coleoptera, Diptera, and Hymenoptera.
