Importance of Mangroves for Fish.Bases for the conservation and sustainable management of mangrove ecosystems in North Brazil

The purpose of this thesis is to assess the use of the intertidal mangrove habitats by fishes in the northern Brazilian coast in order to support, with biological data, the conservation and sustainable management of this ecosystem. The thesis is a compilation of nine scientific publications included in six main topics: (i) inter-creek variability in fish habitat use in a medium spatial scale; (ii) large-scale comparison of the intertidal mangrove fish fauna cought with similar fishing gear in the second largest contiguous mangrove area of the world; (iii) temporal variation in the occurrence of juveniles of eight abundant fish species from intertidal mangrove creeks of the Curuca estuary; (iv) feeding ecology of two important fish species in macrotidal mangrove creeks in Curuca estuary; (v) basic biological information and (vi) autotrophic sources for an Amazonian mangrove web.