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"Islands of the Indian Ocean Social conditions."
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Africa in the Indian Ocean
Tor Sellström profiles the independent island states and the European dependencies in the African part of the Indian Ocean, their contemporary social, political and economic challenges, the wider international context and their relations with, in particular, Africa and the African Union.
eBook
Coral relocation supports survival and growth in an urban reef of the Maldives
Coral reefs provide essential ecosystem services and livelihoods, particularly for small island nations like the Maldives. However, they are increasingly threatened by climate change and coastal modification. In 2022, the Greater Malé Connectivity Project (GMCP) commenced in North Malé Atoll, involving large-scale land reclamation and marine construction that affected adjacent coral reefs. As a mitigation measure, coral colonies were relocated to the reef surrounding Villimalé Island. Over two years of monitoring, relocated corals showed encouraging performance despite challenging environmental conditions. Overall survival reached 66%, with larger colonies outperforming smaller fragments and
Pocillopora
generally exhibiting higher growth and thermal resistance than
Acropora
. Growth rates declined with rising sea surface temperature, and mortality was primarily associated with tissue-loss responses rather than predation or ectosymbiotic colonisation. Health trajectories differed among coral types:
Acropora
fragments were more prone to bleaching, whereas
Pocillopora
colonies maintained tissue integrity but experienced chronic degradation. Despite these biological interactions and health challenges, many corals acclimatised to the urban reef environment, underscoring that coral relocation, when combined with species selection and size consideration, can serve as a viable short-term conservation tool in highly impacted systems.
Journal Article
Dependency on Mangroves Ecosystem Services is Modulated by Socioeconomic Drivers and Socio-Ecological Changes – Insights From a Small Oceanic island
Small island developing states (SIDS) display high biodiversity but are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change and economic and environmental shocks. In Mauritius, located east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, mangroves provide essential ecological services and support coastal communities’ livelihoods, but are threatened by continuous degradation. While regulating and provisioning services of mangroves are well documented, our study elucidates some of the lesser-known cultural values attached to mangroves and the ways in which communities depend on them for their well-being. Using a multi-dimensional ecosystem services framework, we conducted an in-person survey between August and October 2021 in coastal villages in east-southeast Mauritius of 281 Mauritian households in middle- to low-income categories with livelihoods associated to fishing and/or tourism. We analysed the data through distribution analysis, multiple correspondence analysis, and logarithmic regression. Our results show that two-thirds of respondents depend on mangroves with low (37.2%) to medium and high (26.3%) dependencies for cultural services and as a support for food security and income generation. Socio-economic drivers and multiple crises play a direct and indirect role in mangrove dependency. Our results suggest that precarious households have higher levels of dependency and are consequently more vulnerable to mangrove degradation and socio-ecological changes. The impact of changes and socio-economic parameters are therefore essential dimensions for coastal management and biodiversity conservation policy design.
Journal Article
Archaeology in the Fourth Dimension: Studying Landscapes with Multitemporal PlanetScope Satellite Data
For the last seven years, PlanetScope satellites have started near-daily imaging of parts of the Earth’s surface, making high-density multitemporal, multispectral, 3-m pixel imagery accessible to researchers. Multitemporal satellite data enables landscape archaeologists to examine changes in environmental conditions at time scales ranging from daily to decadal. This kind of temporal resolution can accentuate landscape features on the ground by de-emphasizing non-permanent signatures caused by seasonal or even daily changes in vegetation. We argue that the availability of high spatial and temporal resolution multispectral imagery from Planet Inc. will enable new approaches to studying archaeological visibility in landscapes. While palimpsests are discrete overlapping layers of material accumulation, multitemporal composites capture cyclical and seasonal time and can be used to interpret past landscape histories at multiple scales. To illustrate this perspective, we present three case studies using PlanetScope imagery in tropical environments on the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, and Zanzibar.
Journal Article
First insights into bacterial and microalgal endosymbiont communities of various coral morphotypes from Maldives
The Maldivian Archipelago is home to valuable coral reefs that have been extensively studied for their ecological diversity. However, the diversity of the microbiome in Maldivian corals remains largely unexplored. In this study, the microbiota compositions (including both algal endosymbionts and bacteria) were investigated for the first time across various coral morphotypes sampled in May 2022 from four Maldivian atolls (Ari, North Malé, South Malé, and Rasdhoo). Coral and gorgonian specimens were collected via scuba diving at reef sites located on both ocean-exposed reefs and lagoon sites, across various depths (0–40 m). Surface seawater samples were also collected near coral assemblages. Metabarcoding analyses were performed, targeting the 16S rRNA gene to assess bacterial composition, and the Internal Transcribed Spacer 2 (ITS2) rRNA region to evaluate microalgal endosymbiont diversity. Generally, the bacterial communities associated with corals exhibited significant diversity, which was primarily influenced by coral morphotype rather than depth or geographic location. These communities were also markedly different when compared to those found in seawater. The three most abundant bacterial taxa in coral samples were Proteobacteria (ranging from 10 to 95%), Bacillota (formerly known as Firmicutes, ranging from 5 to 10%), and Planctomycetota (ranging from < 1–30%). Most Symbiodiniaceae belonged to the genera
Cladocopium
-C and
Durusdinium
-D (> 90%), while host specificity was observed for variant types. Overall, this study provides first insights into the structure of Maldivian coral microbiota, which could be crucial for monitoring the health of local coral populations and predicting the potential impacts of changing environmental conditions in the region.
Journal Article
Economic Globalisation and the Islands of the Indian Ocean: An Econometric Analysis
This study investigates economic globalisation’s impact on Indian Ocean islands from 1980 to 2020, focusing on the influence of trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), population, and financial aid on economic growth. Using a robust co-integration and causality approach, the study reveals that trade openness negatively impacts economic growth, whereas FDI and population exert a positive influence. Conversely, financial aid is found to have no significant effect on development. Detailed case studies of Comoros, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles and Sri Lanka indicate distinct policy interventions tailored to each nation’s unique challenges and opportunities. This research significantly contributes to the limited literature on globalisation’s effect on island economies and provides actionable recommendations for policymakers to foster sustainable economic performance and resilience in the Indian Ocean region.
Journal Article
Both Environmental Conditions and Intra‐ and Interspecific Interactions Influence the Movements of a Marine Predator
Animal movements are typically influenced by multiple environmental factors simultaneously, and individuals vary in their response to this environmental heterogeneity. Therefore, understanding how environmental aspects, including biotic, abiotic, and anthropogenic factors, influence the movements of wild animals is an important focus of wildlife research and conservation. We apply Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to analyze movement networks of a bull shark population in a network of acoustic receivers and identify the effects of environmental, social, or other types of covariates on their movements. We found that intra‐ and interspecific factors often had stronger effects on movements than environmental variables. ERGMs proved to be a potentially useful tool for studying animal movement network data, especially in the context of spatial attribute heterogeneity. Photo credit: Ryan Daly Animal movements are influenced by multiple environmental factors. Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) were used to analyze movement networks of a bull shark population. Intra‐ and interspecific factors often had stronger effects on movements than environmental variables. ERGMs are a potentially useful tool for studying animal movement network data.
Journal Article
Chagos Islanders in Mauritius and the UK
The Chagos islanders were forcibly uprooted from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean between 1965 and 1973. This is the first book to compare the experiences of displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius with the experiences of those Chagossians who have moved to the UK since 2002. It thus provides a unique ethnographic comparative study of forced displacement and onward migration within the living memory of one community. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Mauritius and Crawley (West Sussex), the six chapters explore Chagossians’ challenging lives in Mauritius, the mobilisation of the community, reformulations of the homeland, the politics of culture in exile, onward migration to Crawley, and attempts to make a home in successive locations. Jeffery illuminates how displaced people romanticise their homeland through an exploration of changing representations of the Chagos Archipelago in song lyrics. Offering further ethnographic insights into the politics of culture, she shows how Chagossians in exile engage with contrasting conceptions of culture ranging from expectations of continuity and authenticity to enactments of change, loss and revival. The book will appeal particularly to social scientists specialising in the fields of migration studies, the anthropology of displacement, political and legal anthropology, African studies, Indian Ocean studies, and the anthropology of Britain, as well as to readers interested in the Chagossian case study.
eBook
Mauritius: Paradise Reconsidered
The island of Mauritius is perhaps best known as Mark Twain's model for paradise and as the land of the long extinct dodo. Despite its small size and lack of natural resources, Mauritius has become the \"star and key of the Indian Ocean,\" touting excellent economic and democratic credential since achieving independence in 1968. Unfortunately, the \"star\" is now losing some of its lustre, as indicated by a number of worrisome trends such as the rise of ethnosectarianism, growing levels of inequality between the different socioeconomic groups and an extremely closed and regressive political class. If left unchecked, these worrisome trends can seriously undermine the model of social harmony and diversity that the island prides itself.
Journal Article