Abstract
The ecology of the macrobenthic fauna of the mangrove forests has received little attention compared to the mangrove flora. The present study was aimed at filling this information gap and investigated if the diversity and distribution of macrobenthic fauna at Kadolkele mangrove forest, a pristine mangrove forest situated at the Negombo estuary in Sri Lanka, are governed by the mangrove zonation and variation of physicochemical parameters of the mangrove soil. Since the aerial photographs identified three distinct mangrove zones at Kadolkele, namely, Rhizophora, Avicennia, and Lumnitzera zones, fauna were sampled and physicochemical parameters of the soil were measured in belt transects that were established at each mangrove zone. Data were collected and analyzed using appropriate field sampling techniques and statistical methods, respectively. Results revealed that the physicochemical parameters in soil varied between the three mangrove zones and that the distribution of benthic fauna followed the mangrove zonation. Further, the diversity measures of epifauna were found to be higher than those of the infauna of this tropical estuary.
Highlights
Mangroves are woody plants that grow at the interface between land and sea in tropical and subtropical latitudes where they exist in conditions of high salinity, extreme tides, strong winds, high temperature, and muddy anaerobic soils [1]
The present study was carried out at the Kadolkele mangrove forest (7∘1149.82N, 79∘5032.29E) (Figure 1). It is situated at the northern extremity of the Negombo estuary of Sri Lanka and is a pristine and relatively undisturbed small mangrove forest patch that extends within an area of 10 ha [17]
7 infaunal taxa belonging to 3 invertebrate phyla were recorded from the 3 mangrove zones (Table 2)
Summary
Mangroves are woody plants that grow at the interface between land and sea in tropical and subtropical latitudes where they exist in conditions of high salinity, extreme tides, strong winds, high temperature, and muddy anaerobic soils [1]. Mangrove forests provide shelter, food, and breeding sites for a large number of marine and terrestrial organisms [2] and are important to humans for a variety of reasons, including fisheries, tourism, agriculture, forestry, protection against shoreline erosion, source of fire-wood and building material, and other local subsistence uses [1, 3]. Kumar and Khan [6] emphasized that the distribution, abundance, and diversity of these mangrove benthic invertebrates and their relationships to environmental conditions are important parts of understanding the structure and function of mangrove ecosystems. As a detritus based ecosystem, leaf litter from the mangroves provides the basis for adjacent aquatic and terrestrial food webs [7] where the macrobenthos typically occupy the second and third trophic levels [8]. Alongi and Christoffersen [9] emphasized that the variations in the distribution and abundance of epibenthos of the mangrove area relate positively to variations in the quantity of exported detritus
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