Ostreobium as a marker

Cindy Hunter cindyh at hawaii.edu
Fri Sep 15 19:44:28 EDT 2000


Hi Bill,

Neat idea.  My guess is that this method probably wouldn't work as well for
branching or foliaceous growth forms, but would be well worth a look in more
massive species.  It would be very interesting to know how death or
bleaching of coral tissues affects the fates of underlying Ostreobium, but
the trick will be in characterizing what the Ostreobium was doing
beforehand.  From my limited experience, there's tremendous within-colony
variability in Ostreobium distribution and depth beneath the coral tissue.
Does anyone have a handle on a way to visualize or track Ostreobium through
an experimentally-induced shift in light regime?

Cindy

----- Original Message -----
From: William Kiene <Kiene at nmnh.si.edu>
To: <coral-list at aoml.noaa.gov>; <carlson at soest.hawaii.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2000 11:04 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Julian Sprung's email.


Dear Bruce et al.
I may have a "marker" for past die-offs and "rebirths" within your corals.
In a matter of days following the death of a coral its skeletons will be
invaded by a suite of microborers (chlorophytes, cyanobacteria) very
different from the Ostreobium sp. that inhabit coral skeletons beneath
living tissue.  Ostreobium is a low light specialist and is likely to be the
only one to survive after the tissue regrowth.  I have proposed this
microboring marker for a potential indicator of previous bleaching events.
Your tissue die-off/rebirth events may be an easier marker to detect (?).

Bill Kiene

William E. Kiene, Ph.D.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History
EG-13 MRC-125
Washington DC 20560-0125
Tel: (202) 357-2309
Fax: (202) 786-2832
E-mail: kiene at nmnh.si.edu





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