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Effective Techniques for the Feeding and Ex Situ Culture of a Brooding Scleractinian Coral, Pocillopora acuta
Published on: June 23, 2023
Nutritional resources as positional information for morphogenesis in the stony coral Stylophora pistillata
Michael Kücken1, Baruch Rinkevich, Lee Shaish
1Center for Information Services and High-Performance Computing, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany. michael@gsystech.de
Abstract:
We are interested in deciphering the mechanisms for morphogenesis in the Red Sea scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata with the help of mathematical models. Previous mathematical models for coral morphogenesis assume that skeletal growth is proportional to the amount of locally available energetic resources like diffusible nutrients and photosynthetic products. We introduce a new model which includes factors like dissolved nutrients and photosynthates, but these resources do not serve as building blocks for growth but rather provide some kind of positional information for coral morphogenesis. Depending on this positional information side branches are generated, splittings of branches take place and branch growth direction is determined. The model results are supported by quantitative comparisons with experimental data obtained from young coral colonies.
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