Porites Pink Blotch Disease

Chris Bentis cbentis at bu.edu
Sun May 9 19:52:40 EDT 1999


I contacted cindy and her sentiments on this issue relfect yours.  I use
the term "disease" loosely and am not quick to believe that  all apparent
afflictions that are observed in corals have distinct etiologies.  T^he
whole "coral disease" group seems to be a mess of unidentifiable
observations with a few relatively weel understood phenomena.    
Anyway, by midweek I would like to have a draft of the paper on cones
for the Biological Bulletin Research notes that
I would like you to review.  Have one now but it needs revision.  
-Chris 


On Sat, 8 May 1999, Les Kaufman wrote:

> James and others:  my experience with Porites compressa, Porites lobata,
> and Porites evermanni (or so I took it to be) is that at least these
> species, and probably many other Porites, exhibit a pinkish or purplish
> discoloration in response to virtually any persistent insult- be they
> parasites, necrosis near fish bite marks, margins of advance by competing
> assemblages of endolith/algal turf (unsure who the main culprit is), or
> even the edges of damselfish gardens.  I think it is misleading to refer
> to this collection of processes as a single disease.  Even if there is a
> disease that produces a distinct, recognizable manifestation of the pink
> discoloration, neophytes will have a devil of a time distinguishing it
> from all the other pinkish blotches these corals produce.  Pink in
> at least some Indo-Pacific Porites means "bad hair day."  Cindy Hunter,
> help us!	  
> 
> Les Kaufman
> Boston University Marine Program
> lesk at bio.bu.edu
> 617-353-5560 office
> 617-353-6965 lab
> 617-353-6340 fax
> 
> 
> 
> 



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