Potential microbial diversity in mangrove ecosystems: a review.

Abstract

Mangroves provide a unique ecological niche to different microbes which play various roles in nutrient recycling as well as various environmental activities. Mangrove forests are large ecosystems distributed in 112 countries and territories comprising a total area of about 181,000 km is over a quarter of the total coastline of the world. The highly productive and diverse microbial community living in mangrove ecosystems continuously transforms nutrients from dead mangrove vegetation into sources of nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients that can be used by the plants and in turn the plant-root exudates serve as a food source for the microbes. Analysis of microbial biodiversity from these ecosystems will help in isolating and identifying new and potential microorganisms having high specificity for various applications. The present study consists literature on diversity of predominant microbes such as bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes from mangrove ecosystems.