Mangrove restoration reinstates similar macrobenthos communities to natural mangroves in Guyana, South America

Abstract Mangrove restoration projects have become increasingly widespread to compensate for mangrove loss. Despite considerable investment in this restoration activity, post-restoration monitoring is often limited to vegetation recovery with no inclusion of faunal groups, such as macrobenthos communities, even though these groups are excellent bioindicators. Here, we used a space-for-time approach to examine whether restored mangrove macrobenthos communities are equivalent to natural mangroves of the same age (5–11 years after colonization). We focused our analyses on sediment samples collected from the lower, middle, and upper intertidal zones of restored and natural mangroves in the dry and wet seasons, along Guyana’s coastline, South America. We observed an overall higher macrobenthos abundance in the natural mangroves compared to restored mangrove areas, which contrasted with higher species richness in the restored mangroves compared to natural mangroves. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling, analysis of similarities, and similarity percentage analysis revealed that macrobenthos species composition was not significantly different among the restored and natural mangrove habitats, ages, and seasons (P > .05). This suggests that the macrobenthos composition in restored mangrove areas quickly converges, after restoration activities, with communities observed in natural mangroves. Our findings indicate that, at least for biodiversity outcomes, macroinvertebrate communities occupying sediments in restored mangroves resemble natural areas rapidly post-restoration efforts.