Mangrove ferns quietly sustain soil organic matter beneath the canopy
Agyekum MK, Riascos JM
Soil Health
Coastal mangrove forests you might walk through or kayak past depend on more than their iconic prop-rooted trees; the ferns carpeting the forest floor are actively building the rich organic sediments that hold the whole system together.
Scientists set up plots in a Colombian mangrove forest where they removed, kept, or added litter from the golden leather fern, a common understory plant. After several months, the plots without fern litter had noticeably lower organic matter in the soil, showing the fern genuinely feeds the sediment. The small animals living in the mud, like crabs and worms, hadn't visibly responded yet, suggesting you'd need to watch for longer to see the full ripple effect.
Key Findings
Sediment organic matter increased in plots receiving fern litter inputs and stayed lower in fern-exclusion plots by March 2017, confirming a measurable fern contribution.
Macrofaunal species composition (crabs, molluscs, polychaetes) showed no significant difference among treatments after five months of litter manipulation.
Multivariate sediment properties differed significantly among treatments, but organic carbon alone showed no significant treatment effect over the experimental period.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A litter-manipulation experiment in a Colombian mangrove found that the fern Acrostichum aureum contributes meaningfully to sediment organic matter, but five months wasn't long enough for its removal to shift the communities of crabs, molluscs, and worms living in the mud.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Evaluating the role of the understory mangrove fern Acrostichum aureum in mangrove sediment organic matter and carbon dynamics.
Understory plants have long been considered rare in mangrove forests, leaving their ecological roles poorly understood. This limits our understanding of how below-canopy vegetation contributes to s...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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