Re: How do you quantify (count) the number of zooanthellae in a SPS?
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9529614#post9529614 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Palani
I'm getting ready to do a research project with coral bleaching with reef building corals (SPS) and I was wondering how do you count the zooanthellae in the nubbin (frag)? What techniques do you use? Are there any methods papers out there that I don't know about? Any help will be appreciated.
Shoots,
Palani
What we commonly refer to as zooxanthellae are dinoflagellates in the genus
Symbiodinium. Their population density in corals is relatively stable and varies between 1 and 5 x 10^6 zooxanthellae per square centimeter of colony surface area, which equals 20 to 60 x 10^3 zooxanthellae per small to medium coral polyp. (From Dr. Dieter Brockmann's article on photosynthesis in the February/March 2007 issue of
Coral magazine. He references Sorokin (1995). Unfortunately, Dr. Yuri Sorokin's book,
Coral Reef Ecology, is out of print and hard to find. I sold my copy last year.)
For anything on corals, always check with the
Australian Institute of Marine Science. They do a tremendous amount of research and many of their papers are available online. They have done extensive research on coral bleaching.
Two leading U.S. experts in the field of
Symbiodinium research are Andrew C. Baker and Todd LaJeunnes. Just run those two names through a Google scholar search.
