The Lubang and Looc Islands in Occidental Mindoro are located west and form part of the Verde Island Passage (VIP), an ecologically important corridor linking the South China Sea and the Philippine internal waters. The VIP has also been labelled as a regional hotspot for tropical marine biodiversity, highlighting the need for management and conservation efforts that are science-based. Thus, this assessment was done to provide baseline data on the seagrass beds of the Lubang and Looc Islands. Thirteen sites were surveyed around the Lubang and Looc Islands, Occidental Mindoro on April 13-17, 2009. The seagrass beds are generally multispecific meadows that are characterized by both continuous and patchy meadows, with cover ranging from 0.62% to 59.49%. Eight seagrass species were observed, with Thalassia hemprichii and Cymodocea rotundata the most ubiquitous. Shoot densities observed in the area are generally high (mean = 961 shoots m-2), and composite leaf biomass (mean = 212.70 gDW m-2) is comparable to other seagrass beds surveyed in other sites in the country. The observed "kaingin" practices in the uplands pose the greatest threat to the seagrass ecosystems of the area because of the long-term domino effect of erosion and sedimentation on the seagrass beds. However, fisheries practices also need to be quantified to determine hierarchy of anthropogenic disturbance that causes habitat fragmentation of the seagrass beds of Lubang and Looc Islands.
The inclusion of macroinvertebrates in the char acterization of coral reef community structures is a com mon practice in reef assessment. More often than not however, data on this component is relegated to rudi mentary analysis and poor utilization, as priority is given to the keystone species, the corals, or to the reef fish as semblage. Macroinvertebrates, being relatively sessile, are vulnerable to current fastpaced environmental changes and it is imperative for a more comprehensive and holistic approach to examine changes in the assemblages of this biota in relation to changes in habitat structure. In an at tempt to address this, temporal changes in the reef macro invertebrate communities of TawiTawi, Philippines were examined in relation to changes in the benthic structure.Macroinvertebrates in TawiTawi were consistently dominated by ascidians, mollusks and echinoderms which showed close affinity to changes in the reef structure. The shift in the reef framework from living coral structures to dead coral and algae were corresponded by a significant decrease in abundances of macroinvertebrates. The in crease in species richness however showed that macro invertebrates have the adaptive capacity to buffer impacts, and slow down the rate of community change by becoming generalists and opportunists, but only for a transitory period before speciesspecific impacts eventually sets in.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.