[Coral-List] reply: coral species distribution

dfenner at blueskynet.as dfenner at blueskynet.as
Sun Jan 7 18:24:43 EST 2007


Milt,
   For zooxanthellate scleractinia, may I suggest the 3-volume series
Scleractinia of the World by JEN Veron.  For the genus Acropora, may I suggest
Staghorns of the World by Carden Wallace.  For Fungiids, may I suggest
Hoeksema, 1989.  Keep in mind that zooxanthellate scleractinia are only about
half of all scleractinia.  To my knowledge there is no summary work on the
ranges of azooxanthellate species; Steven Cairns at the Smithsonian and Helmut
Zibrowius are the experts on those species.  The widest distributions for
zooxanthellate scleractinia are of several species that range from the Red Sea
and east Africa all the way to the Pacific Americas.  There are none that are
cosmopolitan (though several genera are cosmopolitan).  However, the
azooxanthellate coral commonly found on coral reefs, Tubastraea coccinea, is
now cosmopolitan in the tropics.  It is all across the Indo-Pacific, is in a
few locations in the eastern Tropical Atlantic, and is spread throughout the
Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Florida and Brazil.  It spread throughout that area
of the west Atlantic in the last 60 years, and probably was introduced to the
west Atlantic before that (Fenner and Banks, 2004).  It was introduced into
Brazil on oil equipment.
-Doug Fenner

Hoeksema, B. W.  1989.  Taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of mushroom corals
(Scleractinia: Fungiidae).  Zoologishe Verhandelingen 254: 1-295.

Fenner, D. and Banks, K.  2004.  Orange cup coral, Tubastraea coccinea, invades
    Florida and the Flower Garden Banks, Northwestern Gulf of Mexico.  Coral
    Reefs 23: 505-507.


----- Forwarded message from Milton McAllister <mmmcalli at uiuc.edu> -----
    Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:47:58 -0600
    From: Milton McAllister <mmmcalli at uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: Milton McAllister <mmmcalli at uiuc.edu>
 Subject: [Coral-List] coral species distribution
      To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov

What species of scleratinia have the broadest geographic distribution 
around the world?
thank you,
Milt McAllister
University of Illinois
mmmcalli at uiuc.edu 

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