Porites Pink Blotch Disease

Cindy Hunter cindyh at hawaii.edu
Sun May 9 23:54:06 EDT 1999


Cones?


On Sun, 9 May 1999, Chris Bentis wrote:

> 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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