Coral See

For those of you who are into keeping Acroporids (more commonly called Staghorn corals), the following message and accompanying website may be of interest:

>Carden Wallace and myself are trialling an on-line Acropora >identification program and an introductory guide to the Acropora >corals. The address is: www.coralsee.org If you have any problems >using the site or suggestions we would appreciate feedback.
>
>thanks
>
>Dr. Paul Muir
>Museum of Tropical Queensland

For those of you who may not recognize the names of those involved, Drs. Wallace and Muir are two of the foremost coral taxonomists in the world. In addition, Dr. Wallace is an Acroporid specialist and has published a series of books, CD-ROMS, and scientific papers chronicling and describing "Staghorn Corals of the World".

In just playing around with the website briefly, it helps to know a little bit about the terminology associated with coral identification and taxonomy in order to get a proper I.D. - but it's not absolutely necessary. Since the website is set up by geographic location, it also helps to know a little about the natural history of the animal (i.e. where it would live in nature). As with all visual guides, mis-identification by untrained users is highly possible, but the website will get you within about 6 reasonable choices as to the identification of the Acroporid you are trying to identify.

The website seems to only include members of the genus Acropora, and not those of Montipora, even though both genera fall within the Family Acroporidae. However, I did not extensively explore the site yet, so Montipora sp. may be represented somewhere within the huge data base.

Overall, this website seems like it would be of great interest to reef keepers out there. Although I don't keep any Acroporids in Surfquarium at the moment (nor do I plan to), I thought I'd pass this along to my faithful readers (if you do in fact exist).