[Coral-List] Fwd: FIELD OF GIANTS

Vassil Zlatarski vzlatarski at gmail.com
Mon Sep 27 01:12:59 UTC 2021


Hi colleagues,

Nowadays, the means for communications and the access to publications are
much better in comparison with what was available for the researchers
before us.  At the same time there is a growing lack of usage of existing
literature.  It is not a problem any more to obtain access to classic works
published a long time ago, because they are reachable through the Internet.
 There is no excuse to fail using existing printed or e-books.

Recent publication dedicated to the transformation of Caribbean coral
communities since humans (Cramer et al., 2021)  applied 14 common coral
taxonomic groups. They permit the usage of the data of all existing
publications, no matter of their taxonomic approach. Unfortunately, the
paper ignored more than a dozen publications from the period 1980-2020,
which offer results of coral investigations and data on collections of Cuba
and Yucatan, Mexico.  (I would be glad to provide the references and PDFs
access.)  The effect of data neglect is considerable. For example, for the
time bin 1970-1979 the number of reef sites studied and sampled only in
Cuba is larger than the total number of studied sites cited in the paper
for the entire Caribbean.  A work dedicated to the widespread loss of
Caribbean acroporid corals (Cramer et al., 2020) missed the data from Cuba
(collected 1970-1973 and 2001) and from Yucatan, Mexico (collected
1983-1984).  It completely omitted the existence and the role in the
communities of *Acropora prolifera*, taxon originally considered by the
researchers as a separate species, later described with question mark, and
last two decades accepted as a hybrid of *A. palmata* and *A. cervicornis*. The
opportunistic nature for potential survival of this scleractinian hybrid
was proved by the fact that, since 1972, *A. prolifera* inhabits the
reticulate coral reef system Gran Banco de Buena Esperanza with only one of
its parents’ species, *A. cervicornis*, and was evidenced by its
fertility. Interestingly,
during this century visit in Cuban waters the hybrid was observed more
frequently, even in lagoonal areas, where its fragments formed the basis of
build-ups. The omission of *A. prolifera* resulted not only in incomplete
Caribbean acroporid picture but also conceptually limited the attempted
analysis.

Looking back, these oversights of data go to Jackson et al. (2014), and
that publication doesn’t show Publisher restriction on the used sources.

Hope this note could be helpful in a constructive way.

Cheers,

Vassil

Cramer, K. L., Donovan, M. K., Jackson, J. B. C., Greenstein, B. J.,
Korpanty, C. A., Cook, G. M. & Pandolfi, J. M.  (2021). The transformation
of Caribbean coral communities since humans. Ecology and Evolution, 00,
1-21.

Cramer, K. L., Jackson, J. B. C., Donovan, M. K., Greenstein, B. J.,
Korpanty, C. A., Cook, G. M., & Pandolfi, J. M. (2020).  Widespread loss of
Caribbean acroporid corals was underway before coral bleaching and disease
outbreaks. *Sci. Adv. **6*, eaax9395.



Jackson, J. B. C., Donovan, M.K., Cramer, K. L., Lam, V. V. (editors).
(2014). Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012. Global Coral
Reef Monitoring Network, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.




---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dennis Hubbard via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Date: Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 4:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] FIELD OF GIANTS
To: David Blakeway <fathom5marineresearch at gmail.com>
Cc: Charles Birkeland <charlesb at hawaii.edu>, coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
<coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>


Hi David:

I share your concerns. My biggest concern involves the upcoming generation
of reef scientists, many of whom appear to be discouraged from critically
searching the literature. I have been told on more than one occasion that
journals are increasingly demanding that only the most "up-to-date
citations'' be included. As a result, important historical context is
undervalued relative to claims like, "for the first time....". Leading
universities have increasingly allowed PhD candidates to bundle some number
of published papers in lieu of a formal dissertation. Unfortunately, these
future scientists will lack the appreciation of many older papers that set
the stage for modern research .As a result, too many "cutting-edge papers
seem to be reinventing the wheel. This is all too common in "flagship
journals" like *Science* and *Nature *that  severely limit citations
(something on the order of 10-12 last time I checked). These practices make
it easy to miss important historical context to the point that we may be
seeing papers on the origins of atolls that fail to cite folks like Darwin,
Daly and WM Davis.

Dennis

On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 8:41 AM David Blakeway via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Revisiting this 2021 article about the big GBR Porites.. It's a little
> disappointing that the authors hadn't picked up on the 2020 article, IN
THE
> SAME JOURNAL, describing a Samoan Porites colony a full ORDER OF MAGNITUDE
> more massive than the GBR example. Is literature review becoming an
> afterthought?
> Also, the abstract contains the sentence: "This is the largest
> diameter *Porites
> *coral measured by scientists and the sixth highest coral measured in the
> GBR." As written, the first clause of this sentence is clearly incorrect.
> It was probably intended to apply only to the GBR, but, if so, should have
> been punctuated: "This is the largest diameter *Porites *coral measured by
> scientists, and the sixth highest coral measured, in the GBR." (which
still
> seems to imply, to me at least, that non-scientists can't be trusted with
a
> tape measure - I'm sure that was not the intention).
> Of course, it's impossible to write the perfect paper, and unfair to
expect
> the editor and reviewers to catch everything. But surely these oversights
> shouldn't have got through? I think I am over-sensitive to this stuff but,
> for me, they spoil what is otherwise a great little paper.
> signed K.R. Mudgeon
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>


-- 
Dennis Hubbard - Emeritus Professor: Dept of Geology-Oberlin College
Oberlin OH 44074
(440) 935-4014

* "When you get on the wrong train.... every stop is the wrong stop"*
 Benjamin Stein: "*Ludes, A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream*"
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