[Coral-List] Comments on two recent threads.

[John Ware]

Dear List,

I have held off for quite a while but now I want to mention some things 
that have been on my (admittedly) engineering mind with regard to two 
recent threads:

1- With regard to current papers not acknowledging previous work, the 
following is, I think, an excellent example.  Bob Buddemeier and Daphne 
Fautin published the paper "Coral bleaching as an adaptive mechanism: a 
testable hypothesis" in 1993 (BioScience 43(5) 320-326).  At the time 
this was a remarkable insight and was the subject of considerable 
controversy and even led to substantial debate at a special conference 
on the topic organized by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (June 2005 in Puerto 
Morales where I defended the ABH because Bob and Daphne could not be 
there).  Now there are hundreds of papers (it seems) looking at 
speciation in zooks and related topics that do not mention Bob and Daphne.

2- I have a number of reservations with regard to "reef restoration", 
but I will only mention one with regard to the word "restoration".  To 
me “restoration” implies at least two things: 1- you know what the reefs 
was like before whatever problem you are trying to recover from 
occurred; 2- you are going to restore, not just those easy to propagate 
Acropora sp, but all the species that were there including other hard 
corals,  sponges, soft corals, etc etc.  I see no evidence in the 
"restoration" literature that the goal is to "restore".

Just my 2 cents worth.

John

-- 

  John R. Ware, PhD
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