International Journal of Marine Science, 2016, Vol.6, No.14, 1-10
3
of all Faviidae was partially presented above, but in addition, when describing corals, they expressed their opinion
about classification of the most disputed and difficult genera,
Favia, Favites, Platygyra, Echinopora
, which will
be analyzed in detail below. Admitting that
Favites
are similar to
Favia
in many respects, but have cerioid
colonies usually with septo-thecal septa, they underlined that these distinctions were recognized and taken into
account by many researchers, but they were not sufficiently discussed.
The same can be true for
Goniastrea
, which differ from
Favites
and
Favia
, first, by a tendency for corallites to
form meandering series, and secondly, purely cerioid corallites have the same calicular structures as meandering
ones. There are the primary septa with fine regular denticulation and paliform lobes, forming a prominent crown.
At the same time,
Favites
are characterized by the presence of paliform lobes, whereas septa are presented by a
uniform fan-shaped system (Chevalier, 1971). Taxonomic instability within
Favites
can be explained, first, by
arbitrariness of distinctive features of the genus itself in relation to closely-related genera,
Goniastrea
and
Favia
in particular, and, secondly, by division of species, in intricate synonymy, especially the series of
abdita-halicora-virens-vasta-flexuosa
.
Over-devotion to the obsolete nomenclature hierarchy, on the one hand, and insufficient knowledge of variability,
on the other hand, existed and still exists to some extent in the taxonomy of the genus
Platygyra
. Chevalier (1975)
described 10 varieties of
P. daedalia
, 4 varieties of
P. sinensis
, and divided
P. pini
, described by him, into two
varieties. Logical extension of this process in the presence of a large collection, in the opinion of Veron and his
co-authors, will lead to creation of more and more variations, which will result in a situation, when an unlimited
nomenclature complex will be created artificially with incomprehensible biological meaning. These authors
emphasize in their work that
Platygyra
consists of relatively few species. Thirty-four nominal specific names were
reduced to just four. It was emphasized that they have a broad genotypic and phenotypic variation, and visible
variations of skeletal characteristics of corals are fixed within a given species, but their correlation with every
other species is too general.
Yuri Latypov, describing the latter Vietnam corals consisting of 17 genera Faviidae, to each of which cast
diagnosis and synonymy (Latypov, 1995; Latypov, 2014). He described the 71 species with the synonymy, 40 of
them with views of the colonies
in situ
, and three new to science. Latypov stressed the fundamental differences
between
Platygyra
and
Oulophyllia
. The second, in contrast to the first deep trough-shaped cups and high walls,
developed three cycles of septum, the walls are formed by large exothecal dissepiments. None of these signs is
not at
Platygyra.
In the last decade, considerable research focuses on the molecular genetic studies and systematics Faviidae
(Huang et al., 2009; Budd and Stolarski, 2011; Arrigoni et al., 2012). The purpose of this was not holding
pubikatsii taxonomic revision faviid. I tried to analyze the discrepancies and errors in the taxonomic history of
these corals and pay attention to the peculiarities of their taxonomic features to facilitate the work on the
identification and description of these scleractinian.
2 Morphology and Terminology
2.1 Colonies
Most Faviidae have massive or dome-shaped colonies. Ramose or dendroid projections can be formed in some
massive or encrusting-massive colonies. Not many Faviidae can form branched, lamellar or foliose colony shapes.
Massive colonies may have polygonal (or angular) corallites, and are called cerioid. Whereas colonies with
rounded-cylindrical, disconnected or adjoining corallites are named plocoid. Meandroid colonies, in which
corallites are grouped in long winding series similar to the convolutions of the brain, can often be found among
the Faviidae (Figure 1, 2).
Presence of an intercorallite structure, formed in the zone of coenosarc-coenosteum, is typical for Faviidae.
Coenosteum can be smooth or can consist of exothecal dissepiments, which is referred to as being vesicular. In
most Faviidae coenosteum is covered by ribs (costae or coastal ribs) and needle-like spines (spinules), which in
