International Journal of Marine Science, 2016, Vol.6, No.16 1
-
8
3
previous researchers (Dana, 1846; Edwards and
Haime, 1850; Klunzinger, 1879), showing that they
were based only on colony habitus, and many of their
subdivisions of colony types overlapped in the
distinguishing features. Taking into account
distinctions in colony shape, skeletal peculiarities of
corals, and analyzing their variability, Brook
re-described all known species, and described 93 new
species from the collection of the British Museum.
Despite the fact that Brook did not investigate
Madrepora
in natural conditions and his descriptions
were based on museum collections, taxonomists use
many species identified by him today.
In the first half of the XX century
Acropora
were
investigated in detail together with the other scleractinian
by many researchers (Vaughan, 1918; Hoffmeister, 1925;
Crossland, 1952; Wells, 1954); however there were no
special works devoted to just
Acropora
.
C. Wallace was actually the first researcher who studied
Acropora
in situ and type material in museum collections
(Wallace, 1978). She revised
Acropora
of the Great
Barrier Reef of Australia, described 41 species and
synonymized about 100 species. Wallace thought that the
main features characterizing a genus are the form of
colony branching due to lengthwise growth of axial
polyps, and peculiarities of budding of radial polyps. She
distinguished sice varieties of the main colony forms,
and 14 forms of radial corallites and ways of their
budding from the wall of the axial corallite, and used
these features when identifying and describing species.
Genus
Astreopora
was introduced by H. Blainville in
1830 (Blainville, 1830), when isolating four species of
this genus from the genus
Astrea
(Lamark). In the
following years, the genus was enlarged by other
species (Dana, 1846; Verrill, 1872; Gardiner, 1898;
Hoffmeister, 1925; etc.). Minor revisions and
re-identifications of species based on field
investigations and investigations of type species were
conducted in the first half of the XX century (Yabe
and Sugiyama, 1941; Wells, 1954).
Yuri Latypov, studied
Acropora
in situ (more 1000
specimen) and photo type material in museum
collections, describing Scleractinian Vietnam, considered
a brief history of the taxonomy of this genus,
terminology and morphological signs used when
identifying and describing these corals. He described
with an extensive synonymy 5
Acropora
species, three of
which are new to science (Latypov 1992, 2014).
Isopora
name first appeared in 1878, the year when T.
Stader described
Acropora-Madrepora (Isopora)
(Stader, 1878). These corals were identified and
described as
palifera
and
Acropora (Acropora)
cuneata
. In 1984 year Veron and Wallace (Veron,
Wallace, 1984) offered their assigned to
Acropora
Subgenera
(Isopora)
with the model view
Astrea
palifera
Lamarck, 1816.
One publication Latypov (Latypov, 1992), drew
attention to the fact that these two species are very
different from all other
Acropora
. Having full-scale
observation and study on the material collections of
coral from the Great Barrier Reef, Vietnam,
Seychelles and Mauritius, he found that among the
large variety of species of the genus
Acropora
species
group is allocated with the following characteristics,
detached them from other species in this genus:
1. Unlike in all the other
Acropora
species,
transformation of the planula larva into the polyp in
them takes place in the gastric cavity.
2. All corallites grow with an equal rate without
subdivision into axial and radial corallites.
3. They never form branched colonies, have
encrusting and encrusting-massive colonies with
vertical columnar or palm-shaped branches.
4. Being distributed mainly in shallow waters of
lagoons, inner reef-flat, backreef zone and the upper
part of barrier reef slopes, they, as a rule, form vast
monospecific colonies.
The main peculiarity of
Acropora
is the presence of
axial corallites which, having larger sizes, are able to
grow faster than the other corallites, and to form
colony branches. Radial corallites, which is the other
distinctive form of these corallites, bud from the top
