Prevalence of skeletal tissue growth anomalies in a scleractinian coral: Turbinaria mesenterina of Malvan Marine Sanctuary, eastern Arabian Sea
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Kalyan De; Liju Thomas; Sambhaji Mote; Baban Ingole; Afreen Hussain; Rahul Nagesh
- Source
- Diseases of Aquatic Organisms. 121:79-83
- Subject
- 0106 biological sciences
Conservation of Natural Resources
food.ingredient
Oceans and Seas
Turbinaria mesenterina
Coral
India
Aquatic Science
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
food
Algae
Animals
Aquaculture of coral
Reef
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Bacteriological Techniques
geography
geography.geographical_feature_category
Bacteria
biology
Coral Reefs
Ecology
010604 marine biology & hydrobiology
fungi
Anthozoa
biology.organism_classification
Turbinaria (coral)
Host-Pathogen Interactions
Coral reef protection
Environmental issues with coral reefs
- Language
- ISSN
- 1616-1580
0177-5103
Skeletal tissue growth anomalies (STAs) of corals are capable of causing considerable degradation of reef health. This study is the first report of growth anomalies in Turbinaria corals and the first descriptive study of Indian corals. T. mesenterina colonies at 2 sites were affected by small, round to irregularly shaped growth anomalies. Prevalence of STAs was observed to be higher in T. mesenterina colonies with larger diameters. Prevalence of STAs on T. mesenterina was 71% at Site 1 and 40% at Site 2. Affected colonies were seen to be undergoing tissue damage and infiltration by filamentous algae. We describe the gross morphology of growth anomalies which can act as baseline data for growth anomalies from this region, but further investigation is needed to understand the form and etiology of this coral disease.