Journal
CORAL REEFS
Volume 30, Issue 4, Pages 1063-1070Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00338-011-0806-7
Keywords
Demography; Deep-sea; Scleractinia; Modal analysis; Holocene
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation
- Australian Department of Environment, Water, Heritage, and the Arts
- Australian Commonwealth Environmental Research Fund
- Australian National Research Facility
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Little is known about the demography of corals inhabiting deep-sea features due to the logistical difficulties of working at the extreme depths they inhabit. To obtain basic information about growth, mortality, and recruitment dynamics for such a coral, we applied modal analysis to the size frequency distributions of live-caught and sub-fossil specimens of the widely distributed solitary cup coral, Desmophyllum dianthus, collected on SW Pacific seamounts. Comparison of live-caught material collected in 1997 and 2007-2009 indicated modal progression over time and an implied maximum age of approximately 190 years, which is similar to ages determined previously for D. dianthus using radiometric techniques. A log-linear decline in the number of individuals with increasing size further implies a constant adult mortality rate, of 15.1% per annum in 1997 and 9.2% per annum in 2007-2009. The spacing of size modes in the 2007-2009 samples suggests regularly episodic recruitment events, at 22- to 32-year intervals, which may relate to periodic variability in large-scale Southern Ocean circulation. Preliminary analyses of size frequency distributions of the sub-fossil material suggest that the trophodynamics, growth, and adult mortality schedules of D. dianthus in the SW Pacific have remained basically similar throughout the Holocene.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available