Adapting to the ‘Mangrove Environment’

Abstract

As we have already noted, the mangrove environment is highly variable and stressful owing to a combination of periodic fluctuations and extremes in physico-chemical parameters. Despite this variability, the mangrove flora has successfully colonized this environment, apparently aided by the development of numerous morphological, reproductive and physiological adaptations (Saenger 1982, Clough et al. 1982, Tomlinson 1986, Hutchings and Saenger 1987, Naskar and Mandal 1999). Many of these adaptations are inferred; that is, adaptations of mangrove species have generally been identified simply by comparing the characteristics of mangroves with those of species from non-mangrove environments. Experimental investigation of the efficiency of many of these adaptations remain to be carried out; nevertheless, mangroves exhibit several specific features which allow them to occupy the mangrove environment.