ABSTRACT. We contend there are currently two competing scenarios for the sustainable development of shrimp aquaculture in coastal areas of Southeast Asia. First, a landscape approach, where farming techniques for small-scale producers are integrated into intertidal areas in a way that the ecological functions of mangroves are maintained and shrimp farming diseases are controlled. Second, a closed system approach, where problems of disease and effluent are eliminated in closed recirculation ponds behind the intertidal zone controlled by industrial-scale producers. We use these scenarios as two ends of a spectrum of possible interactions at a range of scales between the ecological, social, and political dynamics that underlie the threat to the resilience of mangrove forested coastal ecosystems. We discuss how the analytical concepts of resilience, uncertainty, risk, and the organizing heuristic of scale can assist us to understand decision making over shrimp production, and in doing so, explore their use in the empirical research areas of coastal ecology, shrimp health management and epidemiology, livelihoods, and governance in response to the two scenarios. Our conclusion focuses on a series of questions that map out a new interdisciplinary research agenda for sustainable shrimp aquaculture in coastal areas.

Periphyton community comprises bacteria, fungi, protozoa, phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic organisms, organic detritus and a range of other invertebrates and their larvae. This introductory paper discusses the contribution of periphyton to aquatic productivity and the status of world aquaculture in terms of culture systems, production and trends. Three basic ecological processes in aquaculture can be distinguished: production, consumption and decomposition. The role of periphyton in aquaculture ponds and the three basic food webs (phytoplankton-based, periphyton-based and detritus-based) are reviewed, giving more emphasis on the periphyton-based food web. Fishes and crustaceans can also exploit the detritus-based food webs.

The morphological characteristics, biochemical composition, taxonomic composition and diversity, as well as the colonization process and sloughing and recolonization of periphyton are reviewed. The proximate composition of periphyton grown on different substrates in different habitats, and a list of some periphyton taxa in different habitats (i.e., ponds, lake, marsh/wetland, stream/river and estuary/sea) are given.

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