The Forest Floor

Pelagic processes such as plankton productivity and the transport of dissolved and particulate detritus are functionally important, but it is on and within the forest floor that many of the most essential energetic processes and trophic relations within mangroves take place. Many epibenthic, root epibiont, and infaunal organisms in mangrove forests harvest a wide range of foods—from DOM to bacteria and fungi to macroalgae to amorphorus detritus to wood. It is this catholicity that makes it so difficult of categorize benthic biota trophically; the problem of separating biota from fine soil particles is what makes it so difficult to categorize them energetically. In this chapter, we will examine life in and on the forest floor, with the main focus on the most energetically significant group, the soil microbiota.