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

[Vassil Zlatarski]

Dear colleagues,

This thread initiated with the imperfections in coral ID, became complex
and went to the crisis of coral reefs.  The colleagues expressed serious
preoccupations on different issues.  Permit me to return to the original
theme.

The coral ID is result of actions in two fields: nomenclature and taxonomy.

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature promotes stability and
universality in the scientific names.  Its author is the International
Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.  The Commission publishes
Declarations and Opinions in the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature. The
Code is available for everyone, however its usage is pending attention like
every legal document. Lately, the Commission do not promote change of names
when they were in use long time and are used by many people,  This is
important for the corals because today large number of people are using
coral scientific names.  Before any change of scientific name it is a good
idea to consult the Code and to search about previous decisions of the
Commission.  If necessary, it is followed by a contact with the Commission
and a period to expect its Opinion for changing or preserving the name.  It
is risky to avoid the issues and the procedure of nomenclature, because
soon or later the wrongdoing would would be evident and would requires
corrections.  Corals offer good examples and lessons due to nomenclature
neglect.

About the second, coral taxonomy,  Dennis hit the nerve. The issues of
morphological plasticity and extraordinary variability on different levels
of biological organization are seriously neglected.  Selective loss of
memory (sensu Dennis) or language barrier (if you accept it as scientist's
excuse), please, you decide,  However, let's remind that in the middle of
the last century there were two prominent schools for coral research. The
results of the one were summarized by Vaughan and Wells in 1943 and by
Wells in 1956,  The contributions of the second were presented by Alloiteau
in 1952 and 1957 and by Chevalier in 1987. J.-P. Chevalier is  the mas
prolific fossil and extant corals scientist of all times, who made unique
synthesis of the many aspects of Scleractinia knowledge.  The Paris coral
school studied in great detail the micro-morphology and dedicated special
attention to the exceptional coral variability, which is fundamental for
species understanding and for taxon identification. Today, references and
followers of the second school are rare... In an additional note, during
this debate some colleagues declared that coral ID in Atlantic has no
problems.  The number of species in Atlantic is smaller, however this was
result of considerable lost of coral diversity in this zoogeographic
province during geological past and what is the future potential of such
reduced diversity?.  Furthermore, there are presence of many intermediate
specimens between the nominal species, there are bimorphic colonies with
characters of two species in their different parts and a documented
acceleration of hybridization as evolutionary benefit for coral survival.
Most frequently, the coral ID process is oriented to "see" only "clear"
species.  What about the specimens that "do not fit in the drawers" of the
nominal species?  This takes us to the sampling strategy and collections'
availability. How many, for example for the large Caribbean region,
scientific collections representing the phenotypic variability exist?  What
about our knowledge of rest species traits like intra-colony genetic
variability. presence of chimeras, mosaic nature, life history, etc.?

This post is dedicated briefly to the original subject of the discussion.
For the rest I deeply appreciate the collegial preoccupations.

Cheers,

Vassil

Vassil Zlatarski
D.Sc. (Biology), Ph.D. (Geology)