[Coral-List] Advice needed on coral biopsy protocol

[Diana Melville]

Hello,

Although I've followed the coral-list for quite some time now, this is the first time I'm posting. Under the Supervision of Prof. Filip Volckaert, I am currently a SISSTEM (Sustainable Island Solutions in STEM) PhD candidate of KU Leuven and  the University of Aruba, but I'm based at the University of Aruba's campus. My PhD project will look at genetic connectivity and population structure of hermatypic corals in the Southern Dutch Caribbean (ie. Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao). As such, after gaining the necessary permits and permission to carry out sampling of corals, I will need to remove pieces of my coral study species - D.labyrinthiformis and  F. fragum in order to conduct the various genetic analyses later in the lab. I would of course prefer to sample the corals in a way that is minimally invasive, leaving them with no injury or damage. Many scientific literatures have shown the use of drills and corers, hammers and chisels, etc. I've only come across one paper (Kemp 2008) that speaks about micro sampling of coral tissues using syringes and needles. Does anyone have experience with any of these techniques for the purpose of collecting tissue samples from corals? Any factors to take into account or any advice on these or other techniques I may have not identified here will be much appreciated. Please feel free to reply here or to my email account if you require more information about my work or even about the SISTEM project in general.

Thank you!