[Coral-List] Caribbean Acropora cervicornis paper

[Owen Day]

Thanks for sharing your paper Lisa, it's very interesting and encouraging to know that such massive Acropora cervicornis thickets can last for so long.  You refer to an earlier paper that found this particular massive thicket in Coral Gardens to be "characterized by low genotypic diversity across all three taxa, indicating a high degree of asexual recruitment".  I was wondering whether the output of fertile eggs from such large refugia (with clearly resilient genotypes) could be increased by planting more genotypes in close proximity to them in order to increase the overall genetic diversity and hence fertilisation rates during spawning events. Perhaps the value of these large refugia as a source of fertile eggs could be improved with some strategic outplanting around them?  Curious to know what people think.

Owen

Dr Owen Day
Executive Director
CLEAR Caribbean
email: owen.day at clearcaribbean.org
tel: +44 7525 487595
skype: owenday169
http://www.clearcaribbean.org