Staghorn corals of the world: an identification key and photo library for species of Acropora

This presentation will be a demonstration of a computer-based interactive identification key and a photo library of types that have been developed as a companion to the reference book "Staghom Corals of the World: A revision of the Genus Acropora". Acropora is the largest genus of scleractinian corals with 114 species currently accepted as valid. In addition to this large number of species, there is considerable variety of form within some species, making the task of identification a difficult one. The identification key and photo library, developed by a team at the Museum of Tropical Queensland and published by CSIRO publishing, operate through the program LucID. The identification key enables the user to select characters for the specimen being identified and therefore gradually eljminate unmatched species. The key includes drawings and descriptions of character states as well as field photographs, photographs of skeletons and distribution maps for each species. Video footage of spawning is also included for some species. The photo library is a catalogue of type specimens of species now attnbuted to Acropora, including synonyms as well as valid species. This library enables the user to browse type specimens in museums throughout the world, choosing by country, author or various other categories

Australian anemones final report accompanied by attribution database of Australian anemones (on CD rom): prepared for the Department of Environment and Heritage, Heritage Division

This Final Report accompanies the "Attribution Database of Australian Anemones" on CD rom. The two works complete the project "Literature Review and Attribution of Australian Anemones" contracted to the Museum of Tropical Queensland. An Interim Report was submitted in February 2004. The report summarises findings from an investigation of specimen holdings of Australian anemones at seven major state museums in Australia. The findings are presented fully as line data in the accompanying attribution database for the Heritage section of the Department of Environment and Heritage. Sea anemones are marine animals related to corals and jellyfish. They occur in most habitats from intertidal to deep sea and have the potential to be used for recognition of Australian marine bio-regions. Their economic value includes biomedical potential, toxic properties, symbiotic relationships and the iconography of tropical coral reefs. A Checklist and Bibliography of Australian Anthozoa, developed by Museum of Tropical Queensland for the Australian Biological Information Facility (ABIF), documented the published occurrence of 84 valid species of anemones from 19 families in Australian waters. Our Interim Report singled out 23 of those 84 species for priority documentation as part of the present contract. Dr J. Wolstenholme targeted these and all other identified specimens from Australian waters in visits to the seven museums. This report includes descriptive profiles of the 23 prioritised species, in a format adaptable to web-page presentation, including brief description and picture, notes on behaviour and ecology and published references. This report notes that specimens and accompanying data for the 23 prioritised Australian anemone species and 38 of the 84 known species are held within the museums visited. The report records that specimens and data for 26 additional species not formally recorded from Australian waters were located within the museums, bringing the tally of known Australian anemone species to 110. The list of Australian anemones is expanded to include this information. This report records that the Attribution Database includes 730 specimens with 427 specimens confidently identified to species and 4 tentatively identified to species, with the remainder identified only to genus, family or class. This report also updates the following components of the Interim Report: background, species descriptions in web-page format, species list, classification and bibliography

Stylobates birtlesi sp. n., a new species of carcinoecium-forming sea anemone (Cnidaria, Actiniaria, Actiniidae) from eastern Australia

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.pensoft.net.We describe a new species of carcinoecium-forming sea anemone, Stylobates birtlesi sp. n., from sites 680-960 m deep in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. An anemone of this genus settles on a gastropod shell inhabited by a hermit crab, then covers and extends the shell to produce a chitinous structure termed a carcinoecium. Stylobates birtlesi sp. n. is symbiotic with the hermit crab Sympagurus trispinosus (Balss, 1911). The nature of marginal sphincter muscle and nematocyst size and distribution distinguish Stylobates birtlesi sp. n. from other species in the genus. The four known species are allopatric, each inhabiting a separate ocean basin of the Indo-west Pacific. We also extend the known range of Stylobates loisetteae in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia

Sea anemones (Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Actiniaria) of Moreton Bay

Asterisks (*...*) surround words or phrases that are to be italicized.Nineteen species of sea anemones *sensu stricto* (Anthozoa: Zoantharia: Actiniaria) are documented from the Moreton Bay region in eastern Australia, based primarily on specimens observed and collected during the Moreton Bay International Marine Biological Workshop in February 2005. Each species is taxonomically diagnosed, and information on the distribution of these species elsewhere in Australia is provided based on new field observations and museum records. Three species (*Anthopleura handi*, *A. buddemeieri* and *Verrillactis paguri*) were not previously recorded from Australia. *Actinia australiensis* was previously known only from south of Moreton Bay, and *Gyractis sesere* was recorded from eastern Australia for the first time. An unidentified species of *Diadumene* was found, providing the first record of the genus from Australia. A key to the 18 fully identified species is included. The sea anemone fauna reported in this paper is predominantly tropical to subtropical, with 14 species known primarily from the tropics, and four known primarily from the temperate zone; the other was not identified to species

Reproductive isolation among Acropora Species (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) in a marginal coral assemblage

Hybridization was proposed as being an important source of evolutionary novelty in broadcast-spawning reef-building corals. In addition, hybridization was hypothesized to be more frequent at the periphery of species' ranges and in marginal habitats. We tested the potential for hybridization in 2 ways: observations of the time of spawning and non-choice interspecific fertilization experiments of 4 sympatric Acropora species in a non-reefal coral assemblage at Chinwan Inner Bay (CIB), Penghu Is., Taiwan. We found that colonies of more than 1 species rarely released gametes at the same time, thus limiting the opportunities for cross-fertilization in the wild. On the few occasions when different species released gametes in synchrony, interspecific fertilization in experimental crosses was uniformly low (the proportion of eggs fertilized ranged 0%-4.58% with a mode of 0%), and interspecific-crossed embryos ceased development and died within 12 h after initially being fertilized. Ecological and experimental analyses indicated that reproductive isolation exists in these 4 Acropora species even though they have the opportunities to spawn synchronously, suggesting that hybridization is not very frequent in this marginal coral habitat at CIB

Evaluation of molecular makers for species phylogeny of genus Acropora (Cnidaria; Scleractinia; Acroporidae)

Acropora is the most speciose genus in coral reef with 113 species currently described. Diversified morphology and potential of cross-species hybridization have drawn our attention in defining the species boundary, constructing species-level phylogeny, and inferring mechanism of speciation for this genus. Although endeavours have been taking in developing molecular markers in the last decade, several unique features such as slow evolution of mitochondrial genome and abundant ribosomal pseudogenes of Acropora neither provide little resolution for phylogenetic inference, nor equivocal conclusions in contrast to phylogenies based on fossil records and morphological characters. In this study, we evaluated 4 molecular markers, including mitochondrial cytochrome b gene (Cytb), mitochondrial intergenic spacer spanning between Cytb and ND gene (mtigs), mini-collagen intron 2 (mci2), and nuclear histone 2a and 2b gene (H2ab), for constructing species phylogeny of genus Acropora. All the 4 loci supported the two subgenera, lsopora and Acropora, as two distinct evolutionary lineages, and relocated Acropora togianensis as the fifth species in the• subgenus lsopora. However, Cytb, mtigs, and mci2 suffering from either low variability or sharing unsorted polymorphisms between the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific species provided no further resolution in resolving phylogeny in subgenus Acropora. In contrast, phylogeny constructed based on h2ab gene using Bayesian approach supported, in part, to Wallace (1999), that A. humilis group and A. austera form the basal clades of morphological phylogeny. The utility of nuclear coding genes in. resolving. species phylogeny of Acropora is highlighted

Some Rare Indo-Pacific Coral Species Are Probable Hybrids

Background: coral reefs worldwide face a variety of threats and many coral species are increasingly endangered. It is often assumed that rare coral species face higher risks of extinction because they have very small effective population sizes, a predicted consequence of which is decreased genetic diversity and adaptive potential.\ud \ud Methodology/Principal Findings: here we show that some Indo-Pacific members of the coral genus Acropora have very small global population sizes and are likely to be unidirectional hybrids. Whether this reflects hybrid origins or secondary hybridization following speciation is unclear.\ud \ud Conclusions/Significance: the interspecific gene flow demonstrated here implies increased genetic diversity and adaptive potential in these coral species. Rare Acropora species may therefore be less vulnerable to extinction than has often been assumed because of their propensity for hybridization and introgression, which may increase their adaptive potential

Mitochondrial and nuclear genes suggest that stony corals are monophyletic but most families of stony corals are not (Order Scleractinia, Class Anthozoa, Phylum Cnidaria)

Modern hard corals (Class Hexacorallia; Order Scleractinia) are widely studied because of their fundamental role in reef building and their superb fossil record extending back to the Triassic. Nevertheless, interpretations of their evolutionary relationships have been in flux for over a decade. Recent analyses undermine the legitimacy of traditional suborders, families and genera, and suggest that a non-skeletal sister clade (Order Corallimorpharia) might be imbedded within the stony corals. However, these studies either sampled a relatively limited array of taxa or assembled trees from heterogeneous data sets. Here we provide a more comprehensive analysis of Scleractinia (127 species, 75 genera, 17 families) and various outgroups, based on two mitochondrial genes (cytochrome oxidase I, cytochrome b), with analyses of nuclear genes (ßtubulin, ribosomal DNA) of a subset of taxa to test unexpected relationships. Eleven of 16 families were found to be polyphyletic. Strikingly, over one third of all families as conventionally defined contain representatives from the highly divergent "robust" and "complex" clades. However, the recent suggestion that corallimorpharians are true corals that have lost their skeletons was not upheld. Relationships were supported not only by mitochondrial and nuclear genes, but also often by morphological characters which had been ignored or never noted previously. The concordance of molecular characters and more carefully examined morphological characters suggests a future of greater taxonomic stability, as well as the potential to trace the evolutionary history of this ecologically important group using fossils

Bone Fracture Toughness and Strength Correlate With Collagen Cross‐Link Maturity in a Dose‐Controlled Lathyrism Mouse Model

Collagen cross‐linking is altered in many diseases of bone, and enzymatic collagen cross‐links are important to bone quality, as evidenced by losses of strength after lysyl oxidase inhibition (lathyrism). We hypothesized that cross‐links also contribute directly to bone fracture toughness. A mouse model of lathyrism using subcutaneous injection of up to 500 mg/kg β‐aminopropionitrile (BAPN) was developed and characterized (60 animals across 4 dosage groups). Three weeks of 150 or 350 mg/kg BAPN treatment in young, growing mice significantly reduced cortical bone fracture toughness, strength, and pyridinoline cross‐link content. Ratios reflecting relative cross‐link maturity were positive regressors of fracture toughness (HP/[DHLNL + HLNL] r2 = 0.208, p < 0.05; [HP + LP]/[DHNL + HLNL] r2 = 0.196, p < 0.1), whereas quantities of mature pyridinoline cross‐links were significant positive regressors of tissue strength (lysyl pyridinoline r2 = 0.159, p = 0.014; hydroxylysyl pyridinoline r2 = 0.112, p < 0.05). Immature and pyrrole cross‐links, which were not significantly reduced by BAPN, did not correlate with mechanical properties. The effect of BAPN treatment on mechanical properties was dose specific, with the greatest impact found at the intermediate (350 mg/kg) dose. Calcein labeling was used to define locations of new bone formation, allowing for the identification of regions of normally cross‐linked (preexisting) and BAPN‐treated (newly formed, cross‐link‐deficient) bone. Raman spectroscopy revealed spatial differences attributable to relative tissue age and effects of cross‐link inhibition. Newly deposited tissues had lower mineral/matrix, carbonate/phosphate, and Amide I cross‐link (matrix maturity) ratios compared with preexisting tissues. BAPN treatment did not affect mineral measures but significantly increased the cross‐link (matrix maturity) ratio compared with newly formed control tissue. Our study reveals that spatially localized effects of short‐term BAPN cross‐link inhibition can alter the whole‐bone collagen cross‐link profile to a measureable degree, and this cross‐link profile correlates with bone fracture toughness and strength. Thus, cross‐link profile perturbations associated with bone disease may provide insight into bone mechanical quality and fracture risk. © 2014 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110745/1/jbmr2356.pd