As one of the most prolific and widespread reef builders, the staghorn coral Acropora holds a disproportionately large role in how coral reefs will respond to accelerating anthropogenic change. We show that although Acropora has a diverse history extended over the past 50 million years, it was not a dominant reef builder until the onset of high-amplitude glacioeustatic sea-level fluctuations 1....

The identification of species is one of the most basic, and yet critically important, issues in biology with far-reaching potential implications for fields such as biodiversity conservation, population ecology and epidemiology. Morphology has long been the primary tool biologists have used to categorize life. However, we now know that a significant portion of natural diversity is morphologicall...

The main goal of this research was to obtain baseline field data of the composition of sponges, corals, and gorgonian assemblages that can be used as a reference for future analyses of anthropogenic impact. We tested the hypothesis that relatively homogeneous and well preserved reef units can present notable natural variability in the composition of their communities which are unassociated with...

Growth anomalies (GAs) are common, tumor-like diseases that can cause significant morbidity and decreased fecundity in the major Indo-Pacific reef-building coral genera, Acropora and Porites. GAs are unusually tractable for testing hypotheses about drivers of coral disease because of their pan-Pacific distributions, relatively high occurrence, and unambiguous ease of identification. We modeled ...

Korallenvergesellschaftungen wurden mittels der Schnurtransekt Methode untersucht. Drei Gesellschaftstypen, welche an bestimmte geomorphologische Eigenschaften ihres Sandsteinsubstrats gebunden waren, worden gefunden. 1) Fossile DUnen wurden zwischen 8 und 24 m Tiefe yon Alcyonacea dominiert. 2) Flache Sandsteinriffe zwischen 18 und 24 m worden yon Scleractinien (vor allem Acropora) dominiert.l...

The present communication deals with description of two ciliate species Anoplophrya chkrawartii and Anoplophrya krishnamurthii n.sp. isolated from the intestine of Perionyx excavatus and Pheretima posthuma collected respectively from different localities of Jalna district. Anoplophrya chkrawartii redescribed here which is previously described by Lalpotu as new species (1979) in Marathwada regio...

Reef-building corals experience large diel shifts in their environment, both externally due to changes in light intensity, predator activity and prey availability, and internally as a result of diel fluctuations in photosynthesis by their endosymbiotic algae, Symbiodinium. Diel patterns of tentacle behaviour, skeletal growth and gene expression indicate reactions of the coral animal in response...

Turf algae are becoming more abundant on coral reefs worldwide, but their effects on other benthic organisms remain poorly described. To describe the general characteristics of competitive interactions between corals and turf algae, we determined the occurrence and outcomes of coral-turf algal interactions among different coral growth forms (branching, upright, massive, encrusting, plating, and...