Julian Sprung's email.

[Rosalind Hinde]

Similar observations have been made on the faviid Plesiastrea versipora
(Ritchie
et al., 1997, Proc. 6th International Conference on Coelenterate Biology, pp.
403-408) after artificial damage (with a toothbrush) which removed about 50% of
the tissue.  Polyps were observed to be damaged but to withdraw into the
calices.  Colonies treated this way regained normal rates of photosynthesis and
respiration (per algal cell) in 7 days, regenerated to the point where the
skeleton was completely covered and the polyps appeared normal in 2 to 4 weeks,
and survived at least a year.  Regeneration was seen in aquaria and also in
corals returned to the field after brushing.

Regards,

Rosalind Hinde

At 10:47  15/09/00 +0200, you wrote:
>Hi all, 
>I don't know if these messages were supposed to be on the list or not...but
>I'd like to add my own "two cents worth". 
>The phenomenon of tissue regrowth from residual tissues found in corals
>with deep set calices has been recorded as well for free living fungiid
>corals by Paul Jokiel and Dave Krupp as pertaining to "fresh water kills"
>as well as colonial species as Cindy pointed out. Sorry I missed the SICB
>meeting would have liked to hear more.  In our own work on fungiids here in
>the Red Sea we (Yossi Loya and myself) also reported how experimentally
>induced tissue damage as well as "tissue only" explants caused the
>development of new anthocauli. We also noticed similar phenomena of tissue
>regrowth in some Acroporid and Faviid species following apparent tissue
>denuding. It seem that these corals are proving to be quite resilient. Many
>questions arise such as  are the tissues regrowing to fill the original
>calices or  do they use the calices as guides for further perhaps light
>calcification? Are we sure that during these stresses tissues are not
>simply retracting into the calices as reported by Bown et al 1994 for heat
>stress in Coeloseris.
>At any rate I agree that this a fascinating area and hope to hear more
>about it in Bali.
>Cheers
>Esti Kramarsky-Winter  

***************************************************************************
***********
Associate Professor Rosalind Hinde,
Head of School,                                         
School of Biological Sciences, A08,             email:
rhinde at bio.usyd.edu.au
University of Sydney, N.S.W. 2006,              tel.   :    +612-9351-2277
Australia.                                                           fax  
:     +612-9351-4119
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