Marine Ecologists Reveal Mangroves Might Be Threatened by Low Functional Diversity of Invertebrates
Mangrove forests were once dominant in the tropics but have recently been disappearing at alarming rates worldwide. Although this threatened ecosystem supports a broad range of specialised invertebrates, little is known about the impact of mangrove deforestation on the functional diversity and resilience of these resident fauna. Professor Joe Shing-yip LEE, Director of IEES, and Dr Stefano CANNICCI (Associate Director of the Swire Institute of Marine Science and Associate Professor of The University of Hong Kong), jointly found that mangroves are among those with the lowest functional redundancy among resident fauna recorded to date, which suggests that these coastal vegetations are one of the most precarious ecosystems in the world…
Photo credit: Dr Stefano CANNICCI
Research findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the world’s most-cited multidisciplinary scientific serial which publishes high-impact research.
Cannicci, S., Lee, S. Y., Bravo, H., Cantera-Kintz, J. R., Dahdouh-Guebas, F., Fratini, S., … & Diele, K. (2021). A functional analysis reveals extremely low redundancy in global mangrove invertebrate fauna. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(32).
