Selective strategies aid competitive success: mangrove forests

Mangrove forests successfully compete for resources by exhibiting both r-selected (pioneer) and K-selected (competitive) attributes.

Biomimicry Taxonomy

	Maintain community >
	Cooperate and compete >
	Within a (eco)system

Biomimetic Application Ideas

Metaphor for how businesses do and can function. The first sentence matches how companies usually function, seeing an available market niche and filling it (weeds or pioneers), then being bought up or out-competed by pre-existing (competitive) species. The mangroves could be a metaphor for successful entrepreneurial business that come in as pioneers, but become competitive and survive.

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[Collapse all sections] Summary

"Succession is part of the normal dynamics of many forest types: the chance appearance of gaps, rapidly colonised by opportunistic 'weeds' which are progressively ousted by slower-growing but more competitive species until a mature forest reappears…Some of the differences and similarities between mangroves and their non-mangrove counterparts are shown in Table 2.4. The comparisons suggest that mangroves resemble (r-selected) pioneer species in their reproductive characteristics, but as adult trees they behave more as mature-phase competitive (K-selected) species. This observation, that mangroves contrive to have their cake and eat it (Tomlinson 1986) should prove a fruitful insight into the dynamics of mangrove forests." (Hogarth 1999:45)

About the inspiring organism

Rhizophoraceae
Rhizophoraceae

Organism/taxonomy data provided by:
Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2008 Annual Checklist

Bioinspired products and application ideas

Application Ideas: Metaphor for how businesses do and can function. The first sentence matches how companies usually function, seeing an available market niche and filling it (weeds or pioneers), then being bought up or out-competed by pre-existing (competitive) species. The mangroves could be a metaphor for successful entrepreneurial business that come in as pioneers, but become competitive and survive.

Industrial Sector(s) interested in this strategy: Manufacturing, construction, retail

References

Hogarth, P. J. The biology of mangroves. Oxford University Press. 228 p.

Tomlinson, PB. 1986. The botany of mangroves. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, TJ. 1992. Forest structure p 101-136 In Tropical mangrove ecosystems. Coastal and estuarine studies no. 4. In: Robertson, AI; Alongi, DM, editors. Washington D.C.: American Geophysical Union.

Selective strategies aid competitive success: mangrove forests

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