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Flesh or bone? Quantifying small-scale coral morphology using with-tissue and without-tissue techniques

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Abstract

The quantification of small-scale coral morphology using tissue-free skeletons often requires colonies, or colony sections, to be removed from the reef. This undesirable destruction can be reduced by using a with-tissue technique based on photographic images of living corals. The results of this study indicate that with-tissue multivariate morphometric data contain similar information to skeleton-derived data and can help identify phenotypic plasticity in the massive coral Favia speciosa. With-tissue data can also be used to discern changes with time in individual polyps exposed to new environments.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded and supported by the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore (grant number RP 3991014). The Tropical Marine Science Institute, Singapore, and the Reef Ecology Survey Team, Department of Biological Sciences, NUS, supplied greatly appreciated field assistance. Many thanks to Peta Sanderson, Roy Sidle, James Guest and Aileen Tan for their editing, discussion and support. The suggestions of three anonymous reviewers much improved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Napier University, 10 Colinton Rd, Edinburgh, EH10 5DT, UK

    P. A. Todd

  2. School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB, UK

    R. J. Ladle

  3. Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore

    N. J. I. Lewin-Koh

  4. Department of Biology, National University of Singapore, Block S2, 14 Science Drive, 117543, Singapore

    L. M. Chou

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  1. P. A. Todd
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  2. R. J. Ladle
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  3. N. J. I. Lewin-Koh
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  4. L. M. Chou
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Correspondence to P. A. Todd.

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Communicated by O. Kinne, Oldendorf/Luhe

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Todd, P.A., Ladle, R.J., Lewin-Koh, N.J.I. et al. Flesh or bone? Quantifying small-scale coral morphology using with-tissue and without-tissue techniques. Marine Biology 145, 323–328 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-004-1324-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-004-1324-8

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