Seagrasses are the world’s only marine flowering plants and are important for the ecosystem. They perform essential services such as sediment stabilization, water purification, nursery habitat for important fisheries species and carbon sequestration. However, like many marine habitats, seagrasses are threatened from human-induced stresses such as climate change, coastal development, and pollution.
To help seagrass, many marine scientists around the world have begun to monitor and/or restore seagrass meadows through various methods and techniques. Unlike other marine ecosystems such as coral reefs or mangroves that have been researched for many years, we are only just beginning to understand seagrass health and what methods are the most effective for restoration. Expanding our knowledge can help to improve success in management and restoration efforts.
One area that we are still lacking significant understanding in is how seagrass reproduce. Seagrass can reproduce asexually, through genetically identical clones, and can cover large areas with only one single individual. However, this can pose a threat to the seagrass as a lack of genetic diversity can make the seagrass more vulnerable to stress events such as disease outbreaks or overgrazing. Having an increase in genetic diversity in seagrass meadows improves the chances that a single stressor will not decimate a whole population. Increasing genetic diversity can only be done through sexual reproduction.
However, the scientific community still lacks significant understanding of seagrass sexual reproduction. Seagrass, like land plants, reproduce through pollination and depending on the species may be either dioecious (one plant may be either male or female) or monoecious (one plant may have both male and female reproductive structures). They may also be either viviparous (where they produce seedlings) or oviparous (produces seeds). Depending on the species, seagrass may flower only in rare occasions and these events may last for very short periods of time. Therefore, many surveys may miss flowering events and fail to observe sexual reproduction in seagrass meadows. Additionally, seagrass species may have small reproductive structures, making observations difficult if you are not aware of what you are looking for. This has left us with very little photographic and scientific information regarding the flowering, fruiting, and seeding of many seagrass species around the world.
SEAFLORA (SEAgrass FLowering Observation Recording Archive) is a global, open-sourced database created for monitoring sexual reproduction in seagrass. It was developed to gather seagrass flowering and seeding event observations from marine practitioners, scientists, and citizen scientists to expand our understanding of seagrass reproduction. The gathered data will be used to analyse patterns in the timing of events, the conditions that may trigger flowering events, the potential related health aspects of the seagrass, and how these reproductive events may be changing with climate change and other stressors. This data may then be useful not only for the seagrass scientific community but also for restoration efforts so that we can have a better understanding of when to gather seeds. This database will also serve as an archive for photographs taken of different reproductive structures, helping to further our understanding of the morphology of different species across geographies and time.
© 2024 SEAFLORA-data.com
Photo Credit - Michael Sweet