An Ecological Study of the Soil Microfungi in a Hawaiian Mangrove Swamp

Abstract

FOR MANY YEARS a large number of investigators have considered the ecology and physiology of mangrove swamps, but there are still many gaps in our knowledge about mangrove communities as pointed out by Clark and Hannon (1967), Walsh (1967), and Macnae (1968).Microorganisms have received less consideration than other organisms.Marathe (1965) worked with algae and several microbiologists have studied fungi: Swart (1958) in East Africa; Cribb and Cribb (1955, 1956, and 1960) in Australia; Kohlmeyer and Kohlmeyer (1965), and Kohlmeyer (1968, 1969a, b) on both sides ofcthe Atlantic Ocean and cthe (entralccpacifiE Ocean; and Rai, Tewari, and Mukerji (1969) in India.With the exception of Kohlmeyer's work (1969a, b), there have been no studies of mangrove-associated microfungi in Hawaii.Neither the macrovegetation of the mangrove swamp nor its soil fungal communities have received much attention in Hawaii, possibly because mangroves are recently introduced plants (Walsh, 1967) but more probably because comparatively few studies have been made of fungi in Hawaii (Kohlmeyer, 1969b).This investigation is a study of Hawaiian mangrove soil as a habitat for microfungi and an ecological analysis of the swamp macrovegetation.