ArticleOecologia2015
Morphological variation and different branch modularity across contrasting flow conditions in dominant Pocillopora reef-building corals.
Article in Oecologia, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Genetic Method for Distinguishing CrypticEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Morphological Composition Influences Redundancy, Complementarity and Ecological Relevance of Habitat Complexity Metrics in Simulated Coral Communities.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Internal hydrodynamics within the skeleton ofiScience · 2025Article
- Meltwater Pulse 1a drowned fringing reefs around Tahiti 15 000 years ago.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Prediction of habitat complexity using a trait-based approach on coral reefs in Guam.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Disparate genetic divergence patterns in three corals across a pan-Pacific environmental gradient highlight species-specific adaptation.npj biodiversity · 2023Article
- Morpho-functional traits of the coral Stylophora pistillata enhance light capture for photosynthesis at mesophotic depths.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Living on the edge: Assessing the diversity of South African Pocillopora on the margins of the Southwestern Indian Ocean.PloS one · 2019Article
- From population connectivity to the art of striping Russian dolls: the lessons fromEcology and evolution · 2018Article
- Spatial variation in the morphological traits of Pocillopora verrucosa along a depth gradient in Taiwan.PloS one · 2018Article
- Article
- The molecular basis of differential morphology and bleaching thresholds in two morphs of the coral Pocillopora acuta.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- A genomic glance through the fog of plasticity and diversification in Pocillopora.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Asymmetry and integration of cellular morphology in Micrasterias compereana.BMC evolutionary biology · 2017Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
Pocillopora corals, the dominant reef-builders in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, exhibit a high level of phenotypic plasticity, making the interpretation of morphological variation and the identification of species challenging. To test the hypothesis that different coral morphospecies represent phenotypes that develop in different flow conditions, we compared branch characters in three Pocillopora morphospecies (P. damicornis, P. verrucosa, and P. meandrina) from two communities in the Gulf of California exposed to contrasting flow conditions. Morphological variation and branch modularity (i.e., the tendency of different sets of branch traits to vary in a coordinated way) were assessed in colonies classified as Pocillopora type 1 according to two mitochondrial regions. Our results can be summarized as follows. (1) Pocillopora type 1 morphospecies corresponded to a pattern of morphological variation in the Gulf of California. Overall, P. damicornis had the thinnest branches and its colonies the highest branch density, followed by P. verrucosa, and then by P. meandrina, which had the thickest branches and its colonies the lowest branch density. (2) The differentiation among morphospecies was promoted by different levels of modularity of traits. P. verrucosa had the highest coordination of traits, followed by P. damicornis, and P. meandrina. (3) The variation and modularity of branch traits were related to water flow condition. Morphology under the high-flow condition was more similar among morphospecies than under the low-flow condition and seemed to be related to mechanisms for coping with these conditions. Our results provide the first evidence that in scleractinian corals different levels of modularity can be promoted by different environmental conditions.
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