[Coral-List] what agency should list corals
Eugene Shinn
eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
Mon Apr 15 11:24:29 EDT 2013
Douglas Fenner makes a very good case that corals are not like Bamboo.
My point is, what if a wide-spread species of Bamboo began dying
synchronously world-wide (Pandas main food) and we did not have the
age-old Chinese documentation of death every 40 to 120 years? What
would be our response? Surely we would find something to blame it on. We
might even put them on the endangered species list. Have to save the
Pandas! We would not know that historically they did this on a regular
long-term basis. It remains to be seen if corals have a similar built in
death gene. Remember it has been determined that /Acropora/ species in
the Western Caribbean are for the most part clones. They reproduce by
fragmentation. That's how they recover after hurricanes etc. For all we
know those clones may be 200 years old. Do corals live forever? I am not
aware of massive corals in the Caribbean (also in the Pleistocene) that
are much more than 200 years old. I would speculate however, that their
age limit is likely due to sea level changes. But do we know for
certain? Gene
--
No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
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