Microphytobenthos of Korean tidal flats: A review and analysis on floral distribution and tidal dynamics

The present article presents a historical overview and key findings in the studies of microphytobenthos (MPBs) in Korea, supporting a biodiversity of the Korean tidal flats. The common internationally recognized topics relating to the tidal flat MPBs were found to be assemblages, dynamics, production, and food web etc. in chronological manner. Accordingly the review on the Korean MPBs studies was provided in the given topics, highlighting pros and cons of individual scientific efforts and data. Especially, the brief summary from the several representative works (selected based on citations) related with the corresponding topics were provided as for comparison, if applicable. The world studies of tidal flat MPBs over the past 100 years generally reflected the subjects being balanced followed by logical development of each topic. Although over 50 years of scientific gap between Korea and the European countries were evidenced historically, a rapid scientific advancement in recent 10 years would be noteworthy. A topic of floral assemblages was found to be steady issue in Korea, with documented MPBs of >400 species (ca. 10 new species) from the Korean tidal flats. As part of review, we reanalyzed our selected data from the previous and current MPBs works encompassing above 4 topics, where our key ecological findings were highlighted. Finally, future research direction was carefully discussed by comparative analysis between worldwide versus Korean studies in various aspects. Overall, the future MPBs studies in Korea would be promising to support unique biogeography in Asian tidal flats, yet with certain limitation in scientific recognition and/or methodological weakness.