Bangladesh, March 27 -- Mangrove forests protect tropical coasts from storms, store large amounts of carbon and provide vital habitats for plants and animals, serving, for example, as nurseries for fish and crabs. They also supply local communities with wood and medicinal plant substances. But how resilient are these ecosystems to increasing environmental pressures? An international research team including the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) investigated the role biodiversity plays in the resilience of mangrove forests. The study, co-authored by ZMT mangrove ecologist Martin Zimmer, focuses on the Sundarbans, one of the largest contiguous mangrove ecosystems in the world.

The Sundarbans stretch over more than 10,000 squ...