Few animals eat the leaves of the mangroves
while they are still on the tree. The leaves fall into the water. There
the leaves decompose, or break down. This creates a dark, smelly muck called
detritus. Detritus is the base of the food chain for the Indian River Lagoon.
Without the mangroves we would not have all of the fish, shrimp, crabs,
and lobsters that we like to catch and eat.
How does the food chain work? Plants take sunlight and
turn it into food. Plant eating animals, herbivores, eat the plants. Small
meat eating animals, carnivores, eat the herbivores. Larger carnivores
eat the smaller carnivores. At the end of the food chain is an animal that
is not eaten.
Let’s look at an example of a mangrove marsh food chain.
The leaves fall into the water. Crabs eat the leaves. A young snapper then
eats the crab. A hungry adult snook gobbles up the snapper. A dolphin eats
the tasty snook. Nothing eats the dolphin.
This is just one example of a food chain. There are many
different food chains occurring at one time. Animals do not eat just one
type of food. Animals are not eaten by only one type of predator. When
you connect the different food chains together you get a food web.
Food webs are complicated. The food web connects all
plants and animals in the marsh. What happens if you remove animals from
the web? What happens if there are no plants?
Back to Identifying Mangroves
On to Impounded Salt & Mangrove Marshes
