Mangrove forest: the coolest biome of the planet

Normal trees grow on the ground and rooted down. At some point, the mangroves are all mixed up, and grow in the water, and the roots surely run upwards to take a breath of air. In normal trees, the ecosystem is built around, because there are a lot of fallen leaves and soil nearby. Mangroves are spaceships for almost the entire biome - for example, the fauna tries to live in them, and not outside them. Therefore, there is no soil outside the tree and it is somehow wet.

And these same mangroves make the islands fertile.

But let's start by cloning coconuts. Or not, even with the appearance of the island as such. Or why rain is more interesting on the islands, but not close by.

And then in the middle of the post a mangra branch will come to the island, and everything will turn.

How does an island appear

Just say: I am not a biologist or a geologist, so the whole story will continue to be very simplified. But I ate a geologist with a biological education . So, the Philippines is the place where the edge of the tectonic plate falls. There everything boils and explodes. The timescale of geology, of course. In practice, this means increased volcanic activity and many, many volcanic islands. As a rule, on the site of the future island one or two or three volcanoes emerge, something is spat out of them - and all this may seem above the water. The scale is millennia.

If it seemed - it turns out harvesting a tropical island - because there is no soil. There is nothing to grow and nothing.



Further rain begins to flow on the island. Because, because of the small temperature inversions, it is more interesting for the rain to get exactly on our stock, rather than just into the ocean. At the same time sand is washed in, therefore there is a lot of shallow water around boulders - sand accumulates along the currents.

In total, there were thousands of such workpieces in the Philippines, and there are only a few kilometers between them.

Then coconuts travelers suddenly come across the island. These devils regularly roll into the water and swim at their pleasure. Therefore, in Micronesia and Oceania, one can observe someone's heads in the surf - these are not people overboard, but coconuts. Psychedelics sometimes add pop-up flip-flops and rubber ducks. The fact is that an incredible amount of garbage floats here (it seems from China), and there are even whole garbage clusters in the ocean. Plus, there is a bike that somewhere in the northern seas a cargo ship with several containers of bath ducks turned over long ago, and now they are floating around the world. In general, sailors have many reasons to go crazy in the “dog” watch.



Coconuts hit the shore and begin to germinate in any dense substrate. They do it quickly, and even can sprout right into a bunch of their fellow tribesmen, who were less fortunate. As a result, the island is formed the first palm tree with a coconut.

Actually, a coconut needs to have a dad and a mom, like all normal plants. But when there is only one palm tree on the island, there is nothing to do - it is necessary to multiply with what is. Therefore, as a result of a combination of "female" and "male" inflorescences, a clone of the original palm tree is obtained. UPD: Meklon corrects that it turns out not a clone, but a child of two twins (there will be more or less recessive genes). Plus minor mutations from background radiation and replication errors. Very soon, the island becomes like an army from Star Wars, plus a couple more traveling nuts sails for a change. They, by the way, are popular with the opposite sex.

Coconuts provide the soil and strengthen it, fix. But this is not enough, because the island is still open to all winds. At this moment mangroves are connected to the case. As a rule, when an island is already seated with cloned palm trees, a piece of mangra is nailed to the shore. Immediately with tree worms and other biome features that were imported using the “Shift-Del, Shift-Ins” method along with the tree.


^{At the time of arrival, the branches are approximately as follows (this is far from a fresh island, but it also shows a part with a volcano, and parts where there is where to harden, and parts where the soil is washed off). By the way, piloting the drone, you need to remember that the islands are interesting for the rain, in particular, because they are slowing down the wind. This means that flying over the “screen” from the rocks is just a chance to catch a sickly stream.}

Mangrove

Mangrove is very important to have salted, but not very salty and not very fresh water. The usual. Not, there are mangroves that grow in salt water with concentrations more than in the sea, but our Filipino friends prefer a cocktail from a stream and tidal zone.

Those rains that poured on the island from above, and formed there puddles or lakes, and then streams. These are the streams and serve mangram sources of fresh water.


^{Mangroves - these are the green "handful" in the water and near the shore}

Mangroves multiply fairly quickly (in fact, there are a whole bunch of stages - there are special perimeter plants, there are internal plants and so on, and it’s better to read about this in some brutal biology textbook, since the biome is well studied) - we miss the long process. In the final, a grove forms, which covers the island from two or three sides. As a rule, on the other sides of the impregnable rocks, where water simply does not flow. This is not an accident, because the mangroves fix the soil and form the island to the end. That is, as the island determines where mangroves will grow, so mangroves determine where there will be more soil and sand will be fixed better.


<sup>Mangrove House in Puerto Princesa


View from his veranda at night</sup>

And here the fishermen are hiding from the storms: the bay inside the island of Kalabanbanyang is covered with mangroves:



The fact is that they protect from the waves. Any strong wave enters the mangrove forest and begins to get confused. As a result of certain actions of the worms and the movement of freshwater flows, the mangroves naturally sit down in such a way that the waves begin to break into small ones, and then interfere with each other and mutually extinguish.

Among other things, mangroves can not grow too close due to restrictions on air and light - at the level of the forest canopy is already completely dark and scary.



Now pnevofofory. These are such snorkels, rising vertically from the ground root. With them, the plant takes oxygen from the environment. Avicennia (the type of mangrove in my photos) can grow pneumathores up to 30 centimeters in height, which is not enough, there are trees with breathing tubes in a couple of meters. On the other hand, one “my” adult mangrove of this particular type accounts for up to 10 thousand such processes. "Brushes" at the bottom of the mangra - this is it. The second way to breathe when you are in the intertidal zone is to release the roots on the branches. Straight into the air.



Naturally, pneumatic actuators exist not only in mangrove groves.

Who else lives in the mangrove forest

Worms living in mangroves, of course, are needed for a biome. But mangroves do not know about it and they simply become beastly trying to get rid of them. All plants somehow fight with parasites, somehow react. Mangrove viciously poison worms - up to 40% of the juice can be tannins. In practice, this means that a randomly flown rabbit that has stuck its teeth into the manga bark will quickly (but painfully) rid the biome of its exogenous influence.

At Puerto Princesa 5 centimeters of worms are eating. As for the locals, I'm not sure, but tourists definitely sell “a super-exotic dish that you definitely should try.” I did not dare. At the beginning of the expedition is better to have a familiar Yes, and I have already lived in China for several weeks, so I was absolutely not surprised.

Local boiled bark and tanned skin in the broth. More small shoots go to the beer.

In the mangroves lives and all that is found in the swamps. For example, snakes and mosquitoes (anopheles mosquitoes, in particular). There are no vaccinations against malaria, and the causative agent is also able to hide in your liver for many years, so when choosing a mangrove forest for an excursion, you should look at the one where cases of malaria have not been registered for several years. When a mangrove dies, shellfish cheerfully decompose it, and then bacteria and fungi. A bunch of these mushrooms are compatible with humans. Therefore, if you collect samples (like us), then you need gloves. Although local, of course, all this does not interfere with chopping thickets. Oh yes! Mangroves are very sensitive to the purity of water, so if you see thickets, you should know that there is probably good ecology nearby. Not the fact that not seeking to kill you, but good.


<sup>Orchids, of course


Extremely angry ants</sup>

Of the remarkable inside of all this brew live labyrinth fish. Labyrinth fish, of course, cute stupid animals, but what is interesting for us is that they are presented in a wide assortment of types of respiratory systems. Journey through the wondrous world of the struggle for oxygen should start with an article on the wiki about the labyrinth organ . In short, a crutch was attached to the fish, which allows you to do without water for several hours or days. But now she needs to emerge from time to time, because it can just suffocate in the water too.


<sup>But muddy jumpers are fish with elbows. Able to fall into anabiosis and climb the walls on suckers. Like the mangroves themselves, they confused something somewhere.


Of course, monkeys. Sometimes they even happen on small islands.</sup>

Journey through the links should start, again, with Wiki, there is a great analysis . And yes, I now told you in general terms only one specific type of mangrove forest, which is found in the Philippines, and did not cover the whole diversity of mangrove groves. And they are wildly cool.

UPD: Gorynych23 here left a great comment about the reproduction of mangroves.

When the Filipinos chose Cesu , the capital for the island of Palawan, they took a completely different place from the Spanish occupation. The Spaniards chose a different option from a military point of view, they fortified themselves with a fort (there was no stone, so they built them from coral blocks and expanded them for many decades with prisoners). And Puerto-Princesa is surrounded by mangrove forests with water and mountains on the island’s side: no typhoons or tsunami. Locals say this is the safest place in the Philippines. And they hope that the mangroves will not die out due to poor ecology. Because then the city will not have very fun - there were examples in neighboring countries.