Abstract
Scleractinia exhibit a variety of growth forms, whether zooxanthellate or azooxanthellate, according to factors that control asexual reproduction and ensuing coral growth. The azooxanthellate branching scleractinian Dendrophyllia arbuscula shows regular modes of budding in terms of the locations of budding sites, the orientations of directive septa, and the inclination angle of budding throughout colonial growth. This study reports that such regularities are also found in the apparently different growth form of the massive dendrophylliid Tubastraea coccinea, which shows the following growth features: (1) the offsets (lateral corallites) always occur near four primary septa, except the two directive primary septa, meaning that the lateral corallites do not appear in the sectors of the two directive septa; (2) the two directive septa in lateral corallites tend to be oriented subperpendicular to the growth direction of the parental corallites; (3) the lateral corallites grow approximately diagonally upwards; and (4) these regularities are seen in the axial and derived lateral corallites among all generations during colony growth. Large differences in growth form are found between the branching D. arbuscula and massive T. coccinea, irrespective of the presence of specific regularities. It is likely that subtle modifications of certain parameters (e.g., budding interval, branch length, corallite size, and inclination angle of lateral corallites) have a strong effect on the overall growth morphology. A precise understanding of such regularities, which occur regardless of generation or taxonomic position, would contribute to understanding the “shape-controlling mechanism” of corals, which are an archetypal modular organism.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Bernhard Riegl (Nova Southeastern University) and three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on the manuscript. We thank Shingo Habu (Tochigi Prefecture) and Yoshitsugu Kaji (Wakayama Prefectural Museum of Natural History) for providing us with numerous specimens. We are also grateful to Shin Kubota (Kyoto University) for discussions of asexual reproduction in the Cnidaria. This study was supported by grants (21340154 and 22654062) from the Scientific Research Fund of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
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Communicated by Geology Editor Prof. Bernhard Riegl
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Sentoku, A., Ezaki, Y. Regularity in budding mode and resultant growth morphology of the azooxanthellate colonial scleractinian Tubastraea coccinea . Coral Reefs 31, 67–74 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-011-0808-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-011-0808-5