Wildlife in and around mangroves
Fish, crabs, birds, monkeys, turtles and dugongs use mangroves directly or nearby.
Mangrove forests are a layered habitat.
- Roots and mud: crabs, mudskippers, snails and oysters.
- Creeks and channels: juvenile fish, prawns and sharks' pups.
- Canopy: herons, kingfishers, migratory waders, fruit bats, and in East Africa monkeys such as the Sykes' monkey.
- Adjacent seas: green turtles feed on seagrass beside mangroves; dugongs graze nearby meadows.
Many species are not "mangrove species" but depend on mangroves for part of their lives. That is why conservation planning treats mangroves, seagrass and reefs together as a connected system.
In Atlas. The Biodiversity module holds tagged sea-turtle tracks from the Kenyan coast. The planned species sources (GBIF, OBIS and the IUCN Red List) will add occurrence records and threatened-species ranges.
Related reading
More in Knowledge Base
- How satellites see mangroves
- Sea-level rise and the "coastal squeeze"
- Mangrove zonation: why different species grow in bands
- What Atlas is, and why it is more than a mangrove map
- LAPSSET: why a corridor project matters to mangroves
- Why mangroves matter
- Organisations and community involvement in carbon projects
- Salt marshes and tidal flats
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