ID: valida, nana or xx?

[KafudaFish]

I never stated that the environment is the only factor. Notice I wrote maybe instead of the only way.

But yes the physical environment shapes the biological communities and that has been known and studied for decades. In addition to the community, the chemical composition of the water as well as the system's energy can it. Think about the different sections of a reef.

The community can shape characteristics as well through behaviors such as competition, predation, parasitism, health and even feeding preferences.

Even the chemical compositon and concentrations of those elements in the water have an impact. Think about how much discussion there is related to pH, temperature, and DO on RC.

Again there isn't a single factor, rather it is the interactions between biological, chemical, energy source, flow and habitat structure.

Also you can study and describe the physical environment and with a high level of confidence predict species that should be present.

Now this is mostly discussing the biological community but what about species or an individual and the environment?

Yes the environment impacts the physical expression of an individual. Anyone who is a gardener and has hydrangea in their yards knows that the soil pH impacts the flower color such as pink to light blue to dark purple.

In regards to your question: There is one species of humans.
In regards to your point of genetic variation: Yes humans have it but we produce viable offspring therefore we are all one species.


One example of how the environment shapes human characters would be the varation of skin color due to the possibilities. There are other examples as well. Of course both the physical environment as well as a person's genetic make up influences that expression. This is multifactorial.




But we are discussing corals right? What about when someone makes two frags from a single colony, places them in different areas of their tank and over time, change color until one is red and one is blue as you stated above. The morphological characters have not changed only the color expressed.

Does that mean they are genetically different now?

 

[dvanacker]

But we are discussing corals right? What about when someone makes two frags from a single colony, places them in different areas of their tank and over time, change color until one is red and one is blue as you stated above. The morphological characters have not changed only the color expressed.

Does that mean they are genetically different now?

I have no idea about where you are coming from on some of your points but if you believe a red millepora is genetically the exact same coral as a blue millepora just under different environmental conditions.....well all I can do is throw my hands in the air.

 

[KafudaFish]

My points in this entire discussion are:

Scientific names are better than common names and better than chop shop kid in the candy store ones.

Why? Scientific names describe one species only. They provide clarity. You can go online right now to several coral shops and find the same looking coral yet each one can have a different name. People start threads about this on RC. There are no rules in common names. How does this help in communicating with one another?

We keep going back to color as a way of identifying a coral yet the use of coloration is a poor choice in identification of a coral species.

Why? If you look at the peer-reviewed scientific literature on Acropora taxonomy you will see that speciation is based upon coral structure (morphology), molecular data, and reproductive studies but not color. To be confident in identification all of these factors should be used.

Even when a new species is described and the holotype or neotype description is presented there isn’t a description of the color. Anytime you preserve a specimen the first thing that goes is the color and any time you take a class that focuses on species ID you will probably be looking at jars with dates from the 90’s on them.

For example:

Genus Acropora Oken, 1815
Acropora Oken, 1815 p 66; validated 1963 (Boschma
1961; China 1963).
Type species: Acropora muricata (Linnaeus, 1758).
Type locality: Recent, Indonesia, Ambon.
Neotype: Museum of Tropical Queensland, G49167.
Diagnosis: Acroporidae which are ramose, rarely
encrusting, branching with a single axial or leading corallite
larger than the more numerous radial corallites
budded from it; united by light, reticulate, spinose,
costate or pseudocostate coenosteum. Columella and
dissepiments absent. Polyps hermaphrodite, oocytes
and testes borne within the mesenterial Wlaments on
separate mesenteries; reproduction by release of egg–
sperm bundles followed by external fertilization and
larval development. Paleocene to Recent.


So in regards to the whole red vs. blue and one vs. two you cannot look at two frags and tell someone that they are genetically identical (same species) or genetically different. You can have one species that has multiple forms and it is thought that two or three of the forms belong to one species but the last one could represent an undescribed one. Also you could have two red frags but two different species especially if they were collected in two different isolated areas.

You may have a blue, red, and pink Millepora in your tank but you cannot tell me if you have one, two or three species unless you take into consideration those characters that are in the keys that are used to identify the species or genus or family. There are some groups of organisms that have keys down to the genus level and that is good enough for now. If you use the coral store names that still doesn’t tell me the species present.


The ORA Pearlberry came from one colony correct? That was stated earlier in this thread. ORA imported it, grew it out and started selling frags to us. Later the hobbyist started selling them and said “For sale ORA Pearlberry ¾ inch frags for $75”.

Does that mean that this one colony is the only representative from that one species? There are no others out there? Ever? The only information that provides is the frag came from that one colony.

If so then yes it is a rare coral.

If the genetic, morphological and reproductive characters are identical to 100,000 other colonies out there (not from ORA) then those 100,001 colonies are the same species regardless of who first imported the coral.

Having said that the only thing we can agree on is we disagree and I figure we have beat this dead horse one too many times.

Sorry to the OP for taking this around the horn but it is an interesting discussion and maybe it can be brought up again.

Good luck everyone and enjoy the hobby.