Publications by authors named "Christopher Muhando"
Article Synopsis
- * The study identified the challenges posed by climate change to Tanzania's artisanal fishing, marine protected areas, and seaweed farming, emphasizing the need for careful marine spatial planning to enhance climate resilience.
- * By analyzing climate resilience and potential areas for growth over the next 20 to 40 years, the research suggests that effective strategies can help coastal communities adapt, create economic opportunities, and support biodiversity, but highlights the necessity of reducing global emissions to secure a sustainable future.
Fish larvae supply in nearshore vegetated habitats, such as seagrass meadows and mangroves, contributes significantly to sustainable fish stocks. Yet, little information is available on distribution patterns of fish larvae in mangrove and seagrass habitats of the western Indian Ocean. The present study investigated the abundance, diversity and assemblage composition of fish larvae in mangrove creeks, inshore seagrass meadows (located adjacent to mangroves) and nearshore seagrass meadows (located in-between mangroves and coral reefs) in two coastal seascapes of Zanzibar (Tanzania) across seasons for 1 year.
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- Sponges are crucial to marine ecosystems, thriving in association with microorganisms that contribute to their chemical defenses.
- The abundance of sponges in the Western Indian Ocean, especially around coral reefs in Zanzibar, is rising due to human impacts, but there's limited knowledge about their chemical ecology and microorganisms.
- A study using advanced sequencing techniques revealed that sponges host unique and diverse microbial communities linked to their chemical defenses and the production of bioactive compounds.
Coral reefs are experiencing increasing anthropogenic impacts that result in substantial declines of reef-building corals and a change of community structure towards other benthic invertebrates or macroalgae. Reefs around Zanzibar are exposed to untreated sewage and runoff from the main city Stonetown. At many of these sites, sponge cover has increased over the last years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTropical coral reefs feature extraordinary biodiversity and high productivity rates in oligotrophic waters. Due to increasing frequencies of perturbations--anthropogenic and natural--many reefs are under threat. Such perturbations often have devastating effects on these unique ecosystems and especially if they occur simultaneously and amplify each other's impact, they might trigger a phase shift and create irreversible conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined the distribution and abundance of corallimorpharians (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) in Tanzania in relation to different aspects of the coral reef environment. Five reefs under varying degrees of human disturbance were investigated using the line intercept transect and point technique. Corallimorpharian growth and the composition of the substratum were quantified in different habitats within reefs: the inner and middle reef flat, the reef crest, and at the 2 and 4 m depths on the reef slope.
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