[Coral-List] what agency should list corals

[Eugene Shinn]

Douglas Fenner makes a very good case that corals are not like Bamboo. 
My point is, what if a wide-spread species of Bamboo began dying 
synchronously world-wide (Pandas main food) and we did not have the 
age-old Chinese documentation of death every 40 to 120 years?  What 
would be our response? Surely we would find something to blame it on. We 
might even put them on the endangered species list. Have to save the 
Pandas!  We would not know that historically they did this on a regular 
long-term basis. It remains to be seen if corals have a similar built in 
death gene. Remember it has been determined that /Acropora/ species in 
the Western Caribbean are for the most part clones. They reproduce by 
fragmentation. That's how they recover after hurricanes etc. For all we 
know those clones may be 200 years old. Do corals live forever? I am not 
aware of massive corals in the Caribbean (also in the Pleistocene) that 
are much more than 200 years old. I would speculate however, that their 
age limit  is  likely  due to sea level changes. But do we know for 
certain? Gene

-- 


No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
---------------------------------- -----------------------------------