Highly Productive Tropical Seagrass Beds Support Diverse Consumers and a Large Organic Carbon Pool in the Sediments

• Published in: Diversity (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 11; p. 544
• Main Authors: Lee, Chen-Lu, Lin, Wei-Jen, Liu, Pi-Jen, Shao, Kwang-Tsao, Lin, Hsing-Juh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.11.2021
• Subjects: Beds (process engineering); biodiversity; Biomass; blue carbon; Carbon; Carbon sinks; Chelonia mydas; Coastal ecosystems; Consumers; Coral reefs; Detritus; Ecopath; Ecosystems; Energy flow; Eretmochelys imbricata; Fish; Fisheries; Fishing; Food chains; Food sources; Food webs; Herbivores; Mortality; network analysis; Organic carbon; Predation; Predators; Reptiles & amphibians; Respiration; seagrass beds; Seagrasses; Sediments; Sharks; South China Sea; Trophic levels; South China Sea

Tropical seagrass beds are productive coastal ecosystems that are important blue carbon sinks and crucial habitats and feeding grounds for consumers at high trophic levels. To understand how energy sustains the ecosystem from seagrass production, we constructed an Ecopath trophic model to reveal the...