RWD vs Sparisoma
Ron Hill
Ron.Hill at noaa.gov
Fri Sep 26 09:34:16 EDT 1997
Colleagues,
I would also like to add some of my own observations into this complex
problem (debate) although I have just joined the list-server in the
last few days and have not been able to follow the entire debate thus
far. While in Puerto Rico (over the last 3-4 years), I also witnessed
the chewing of corals by parrotfish (S. viride), as discussed by Jaime
Garzon-Ferriera from Columbia. Although the most common occurences I
noted were in the shallow forereef crest and the coral species was
Acropora palmata. The parrotfish chewed a horizontal strip along the
edge of the "branch" about 2-3 cm deep into the skeleton, 5 cm across,
and often the entire length of the branch (maybe 50 cm long) on
horizontal branches. Another graduate student at UPR told me that
this was caused by parrotfish when I initially saw it. I argued with
him for more than 6 months, thinking he was sadly mistaken, until I
saw it happening myself.
I understand that RWD was seen to continue to eat away at the corals
after they had been transferred to buckets, was there any evidence
that this disease could infect either healthy or physically damaged
corals in the bucket, or could spread to healthy areas of the infected
coral (by jumping over heathy tissue)? Is there a change in pH under
the diseased area, by any chance? This is not uncommon under biofilms
in pipelines where the local environment is set up and protected by
the biofilm or mucus of bacteria even in very fast flowing systems.
Keep up the flow,
Ron Hill (recently of UPR-Mayaguez)
Sea Grant Fellow
National Marine Fisheries Service
Office of Habitat Conservation
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