[Coral-List] differences in ability of corals to acclimatize - what are the causes?

[SFerse at aol.com]

Dear coral listers,

while reviewing literature for my masters thesis, I came across two papers that took a different approach to explaining the higher susceptability of branching coral species to changes in their environment. In an early work, L. Franzisket (1964) measured the metabolic rates of different coral species and came to the conclusion that corals with many small polyps and high growth rates, such as branching species of Acropora, had higher metabolic rates than massive species with bigger polyps. Refering to their susceptability to bleaching, he concluded that species with a higher metabolic rate would be less able to acclimatize to drastic changes in their environment than slow growing species with a low metabolism (Franzisket 1970).
In a recent paper, however, Gates and Edmunds (1999) concluded that 'species with low growth rates ... and high metabolic rates ... , such as the massive species, acclimatize more effectively than those with high growth rates and low metabolic rates, a feature that is characteristic of branching species'.
Could anyone help me and explain this apparent contradiction? Any comments and suggestions would be more than welcome.

Thank you, 

Sebastian Ferse

-- 
******************************************************
.¸. , . .·´¯`·.
><(((º>     `·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><(((º>¸
         ><(((º>             ·.¸¸.·´¯`·...
               
Sebastian Ferse

M.Sc. student in International Studies in Aquatic Tropical Ecology (ISATEC), Center for Marine Tropical Ecology (ZMT), Bremen

Pappelstraße 42a
D-28199 Bremen
Germany

e-mail: sferse at aol.com
+49/0421-5487534
mobil: 0172-4157671