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The mangroves of the Straits of Malacca are found along the coast of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and northern Sumatra. These tropical mangrove forests are highly diverse, and are important wetlands with high conservation values. There are two Ramsar sites along the Strait of Malacca: Pulau Kukup and Tanjung Piai. [1]
Tanjung Piai coastal mangrove is an internationally important Ramsar site. Under the Ramsar Convention, the government and relevant stakeholders have an obligation to ensure the mangrove ecosystem and its values are maintained. Erosion at the site needs to be minimized to safeguard the ecological integrity of the mangrove ecosystem. The root causes of the erosion need to be eliminated or reduced.
Tanjung Piai is a nationally important icon, being one of only five Ramsar sites in Malaysia. Tanjung Piai is also an important nature site in Johor, being the 3rd designated park of Johor National Park Corporation. Tanjung Piai has high socio-economic value for fisheries. The site also has high ecotourism potential, attracting 32,360 visitors in 2006. The site is located on the southernmost tip of mainland Asia and is listed as a priority site for national ecotourism.
Tanjung Piai has a good representation of mangroves (22 mangrove tree species). It is also an important habitat for migratory and resident birds. These include the IUCN-listed vulnerable species, such as the lesser adjutant stork. It is part of the Important Bird Area (IBA) of southwest Johor, which extends from Parit Jawa to Tanjung Piai. The southwest Johor mangroves are ecologically important as a natural barrier to protect the inland villages and agricultural lands from storm events, including tsunamis.
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Mangroves are trees that grow in the intertidal zone of sheltered shores in the tropics and subtropics. The tree trunks, aerial roots, and sediment provide suitable habitats for colonization of animals. Above the ground, the trees and canopy provide a habitat for insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Mangrove roots hanging in water along creeks and inlets are home a variety of epibionts (those that encrust) such as sponges, barnacles, bivalves, and algae. The tree trunks within forest are also a habitat for epibionts (small encrusting invertebrates) such as barnacles, bivalves, and several species of mobile gastropods including periwinkles. The soft sediment in the mangrove forest is the habitat of polychaetes, gastropods, crabs and a sipuncula (peanut worm).
Mangrove fauna may be grouped into macrofauna (larger than 2mm, gastropods/snails and crabs), meiofauna (0.1 mm to 2mm, mainly free-living nematodes, harpacticoida, copepods, and foraminifera), and microfauna (less than 0.1 mm, ciliates and other protozoans).
Mangroves are inhabited by a variety of benthic invertebrates, such as polychaetes, gastropods, bivalves, hermit crabs, brachyuran crabs and sipuncula. Some species live on the sediment surface or reside in burrows, while others live on aerial roots and lower tree trunks or prop roots. Still others burrow in decaying wood. The burrowing activities of benthic invertebrates have a pronounced effect on sediment properties and biochemical processes. They enhance the porosity of water flow through the sediment and assist in flushing away toxic substances.
Feeding activities of invertebrates on the sediment surface and plant matter promotes nutrient cycling. Benthic invertebrates are a source of food for vertebrates (for example, reptiles, birds, otters, and shallow water fish that come into the mangrove shore at high tide).
Macrofauna may be divided into epifauna (living on the surface and not burrowing) and infauna (those burrowing in sediment). Many gastropods, crabs, and bivalve species are typical of epifauna. The infauna consist of few polychaetes, pistol prawns, many crabs, and a sipuncula. Many sesarmid crabs make extensive burrows beneath the surface, and some fauna take refuge in them.
Macrofaunal communities in high and low intertidal mangroves are distinctly different. This relates to prevailing different environmental conditions with different periods of tidal cover. The lower shore is frequently covered by tides, while the upper shore is covered by occasional high tides.
In the high shore, the substrate is dry with more leaf litter accumulation; however, deposit feeders are abundant. Frequent inundation of the low shore also favors the presence of filter feeders like barnacles and oysters (on tree stems) and abundance of deposit feeders on the substrate.
Very common invertebrates of the mangrove shore are:
Gastropods and bivalves (low shore)
Gastropods and a bivalve (high shore)
Macrobenthos (crabs and gastropods) ingest sediment and food such as bacteria, microalgae, meiofauna and detritus. They burrow, move through, and modify it in many physical and chemical ways. Crab burrows provide an efficient mechanism for exchanging water between the anoxic substrate and the overlying water. A crab burrow inhabited by a sesarmid crab and a pistol prawn was completely flushed within one hour by the activities of the crustaceans during a single tidal event.
Crabs and gastropods are the major seed predators in mangrove forests and play an important role in determining plant community structure. There are mutual relationships between sesarmid crabs and mangroves, where mangroves provide a suitable habitat for the crabs, and the crabs reduce competition between mangrove plant species through selective predation on seedlings. High seed predation by crabs can have negative influence on regeneration of mangrove trees. Grapsid crabs dominate in Australia, Malaysia and Panama, while gastropods Cerithidea scalariformis and Melampus coeffeus are important seed predators in Florida mangroves.
Detritus feeding invertebrates dominate the mangrove fauna. Grapsid crabs are major consumers of mangrove leaf litter and therefore produce large amounts of fecal material rich in nutrients and energy. These crabs graze and pick organic material off the surface of sediment, suggesting that they are using microbial resources for their nitrogen needs.
Fish predation on mangrove invertebrates occurs at high tide when mangrove shore is inundated. Fishes netted within the mangroves at high tide showed the presence of crabs and sipuncula in their stomachs.
Benthic invertebrates in the mangrove forest play an important ecological role by burrowing in the sediment where they assist in flushing toxic substances and modifying the oxidation status of the surrounding sediment.
Feeding on plant matter assists in recycling organic matter and produces animal biomass. Animal biomass is a source of food for vertebrate predators; e.g. reptiles, birds, otters, and inshore fishes that come in at high tide.
The Sipuncula or Sipunculida is a class containing about 162 species of unsegmented marine annelid worms. The name Sipuncula is from the genus name Sipunculus, and comes from the Latin siphunculus meaning a "small tube".
Benthos, also known as benthon, is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the bottom of a sea, river, lake, or stream, also known as the benthic zone. This community lives in or near marine or freshwater sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the foreshore, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the abyssal depths.
Bioturbation is defined as the reworking of soils and sediments by animals or plants. These include burrowing, ingestion, and defecation of sediment grains. Bioturbating activities have a profound effect on the environment and are thought to be a primary driver of biodiversity. The formal study of bioturbation began in the 1800s by Charles Darwin experimenting in his garden. The disruption of aquatic sediments and terrestrial soils through bioturbating activities provides significant ecosystem services. These include the alteration of nutrients in aquatic sediment and overlying water, shelter to other species in the form of burrows in terrestrial and water ecosystems, and soil production on land.
Tanjung Piai is a cape in Pontian District, Johor, Malaysia. It is the southernmost point of Peninsular Malaysia and thus the most southern point of mainland Eurasia. The skyline of Singapore is visible across the Johor Strait from the point. It features seafood restaurants, perched on wooden jetties that are surrounded by a rugged and rarefied coastline of unspoiled mangrove forests.
Roebuck Bay is a bay on the coast of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Its entrance is bounded in the north by the town of Broome, and in the south by Bush Point and Sandy Point. It is named after HMS Roebuck, the ship captained by William Dampier when he explored the coast of north-western Australia in 1699. The Broome Bird Observatory lies on the northern coast of the bay.
Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangrove trees cannot withstand freezing temperatures. There are about 80 different species of mangrove trees. All of these trees grow in areas with low-oxygen soil, where slow-moving waters allow fine sediments to accumulate.
The Exe estuary is an estuary on the south coast of Devon, England.
The state of Johor in Malaysia is noted for its national parks and forest reserves which preserve virgin rainforests known for its biodiversity and endangered species of animals. Mangrove swamps and coral reefs are also protected within these parks.
Intertidal ecology is the study of intertidal ecosystems, where organisms live between the low and high tide lines. At low tide, the intertidal is exposed whereas at high tide, the intertidal is underwater. Intertidal ecologists therefore study the interactions between intertidal organisms and their environment, as well as between different species of intertidal organisms within a particular intertidal community. The most important environmental and species interactions may vary based on the type of intertidal community being studied, the broadest of classifications being based on substrates—rocky shore and soft bottom communities.
Bahia Lomas is a bay in the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan in Southern Chile, on the north coast of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. The area is a large tidal plain, with a tidal variation up to 7 km. The wetlands of the bay are important sites for the red knot, the Hudsonian godwit and other shorebirds. The wetlands are a Ramsar site of international importance and an Important Bird Area.
Cerithidea decollata, common name the truncated mangrove snail, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Potamididae.
Telescopium telescopium, commonly known as the telescope snail, is a species of snail in the horn snail family Potamididae found in mangrove habitats in the Indo-Pacific. They are large snails that can grow up to 8 to 10 cm in length and are easily recognizable by their cone-shaped shell.
Marine habitats are habitats that support marine life. Marine life depends in some way on the saltwater that is in the sea. A habitat is an ecological or environmental area inhabited by one or more living species. The marine environment supports many kinds of these habitats. Marine habitats can be divided into coastal and open ocean habitats. Coastal habitats are found in the area that extends from as far as the tide comes in on the shoreline out to the edge of the continental shelf. Most marine life is found in coastal habitats, even though the shelf area occupies only seven percent of the total ocean area. Open ocean habitats are found in the deep ocean beyond the edge of the continental shelf.
Salt ponds are a natural feature of both temperate and tropical coastlines. These ponds form a vital buffer zone between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Contaminants such as sediment, nitrates and phosphates are filtered out by salt ponds before they can reach the ocean. The depth, salinity and overall chemistry of these dynamic salt ponds fluctuate depending on temperature, rainfall, and anthropogenic influences such as nutrient runoff. The flora and fauna of tropical salt ponds differ markedly from those of temperate ponds. Mangrove trees are the dominant vegetation of tropical salt pond ecosystems, which also serve as vital feeding and breeding grounds for shore birds.
Listriolobus pelodes is a species of marine spoon worm. It is found in shallow seas in the North East Pacific off the coast of California. It lives in a burrow in soft sediments.
Hungry Bay Nature Reserve is a nature reserve on the east coast of Bermuda. It was established in 1986. It is considered the best example of coastal mangrove swamp on the island. It includes the Hungry Bay area and the largest mangrove coastal swamp in Bermuda. It is protected by a Tree preservation order (T.P.O.) and designated as an official Nature Reserve within the Parks system of Bermuda.
The Gulf of Panama mangroves (NT1414) is an ecoregion along the Pacific coast of Panama, Colombia. The mangroves experience seasonal flooding with high levels of sediment, and occasional extreme storms or very low rainfall due to El Niño effects. They are important as a breeding or nursery area for marine species. Areas of the mangroves have been recognized as Important Bird Areas and Ramsar wetlands. The ecoregion has been severely degraded by clearance of mangroves for agriculture, pasturage and shrimp farming, by urban pressure around Panama City, and by pollution related to the Panama Canal.
The Esmeraldas-Pacific Colombia mangroves (NT1409) is an ecoregion of mangrove forests along the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador. It is threatened by human population growth, leading to over-exploitation for wood and clearance for farming and aquaculture.
Ochetostoma erythrogrammon is a species of spoon worm in the family Thalassematidae. It is found in shallow water in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans, burrowing in soft sediment.
Streblospio benedicti is a small polychaete native to the Western Atlantic, where its distribution ranges from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Venezuela. Sexual maturity is reached at around 9 to 14 weeks and populations and individuals may vary during development. It can be found in the mudflats and soft sediments of estuaries and coastal waters. Its general habitat includes oyster reefs, mangroves, grass beds, marinas, and docks while the tidal range where S. benedicti can be found is subtidal to intertidal. Additionally, S. benedicti can tolerate a broad range of temperatures and salinities. Due to its tolerance of high organic contents, S. benedicti is a pioneer organism of new habitats that it settles in. Furthermore, despite its small size, only reaching a maximum of 20 mm (0.79 in) in length, S. benedicti plays an important role in estuarine food webs as it can reach high population densities and is a substantial grazer of phytoplankton.