[Coral-List] Do coral studies lack crucial species information??

[Peter Sale]

Hi all,
As one who is known for constantly forgetting that corals are more than the landscape in which reef fishes spend their lives, I hesitate to jump in to this discussion.  (But only for a moment or two 😊 )

I think it helps to keep a distinction between a) the struggle to conserve coral reefs, and b) our scientific interests in coral reefs.

I believe we already know that some different species of coral will respond differently to the pattern of warming now occurring.  Those species differences can only be detected by a) testing thermal limits of known species and/or b) recording, at a species-specific level, the responses of corals to specific bleaching events.  If such work is not done, we won’t build our understanding of how corals differ in susceptibility.  So our scientific interests demand species level studies.

But our conservation efforts depend, at least in part, in documenting the decline and making the world aware of its global extent.  Species-level data can always be grouped into genera, lifeforms, or simply corals, so data from any reasonably quantitative source, regardless of the taxonomic precision can always be compared/combined.  Using tools that are simpler and therefore accessible to more participants seems perfectly appropriate in this context.

Peter Sale
University of Windsor
www.petersalebooks.com<http://www.petersalebooks.com>