A couple of mysteries, both from Komodo 1

Yikes - Leslie is off-line? Heavens to Betsy.

Meanwhile, can anyone help with a couple of small mysteries.

The first are what appear (to me) to be some sort of growths on a Linckia sp. seastar. I thought ctenophore, but I can't find anything in the books that resembles this....

Frogfish...

Robert,

Are you sure that they are not part of the starfish? If not then my guess would be flatworm?

Alex

And this one, which I assume is a coral, but I can't find anything quite like it in either of my two coral reference books. (Julian Sprung's Corals: A quick reference guide and Harry Erhardt and Daniel Knop Corals: Indo-Pacific Field Guide).

This was on Crystal Bommie, a wonderful dive site in the north part of Komodo National Park, not too deep. It appeared semi-florescent.

(And by the way, can't someone come up with a better way to organize a corals field guide. About the only way to find something I have ever figure out is to start at page one and keep going, page by page.)

Robert

Your coral is Simphyllia valenciennesii

Robert there is an easy way to ID corals. Just like with fish you need to become familiar with the different families which is really pretty easy. Once you know the family, determining the genus is much easier since you are down to only a few choices. Once you know the genus there are keys for determining the species, but they often require examining the skeleton. So you usually end up flipping through the pages for that genus until you find something close, (so long as you are not looking at the genus Acropora which has about 200 species.

Thanks for the ID.

Perhaps my problem is that there is just too much morphological variation in coral genuses (and species) for me to get my head around these taxa. For example, one of the two photos of Symphillia valenciennesii in the Erhardt/Knopp book confirms the id you've suggested.

But there are four photographs showing examples Simphyllia valenciennesii in Julian Sprung's book, all showing considerable variation, but some similarity. None of these four examples remotely resemble my coral or the mian S. valenciennesii example in the Erhardt/Knopp book, at least not to me.

I could go on. My point is that I would like to see a coral guide that was organized (or indexed) by physical features in some way. For example, if the specimen to be identified was foliate in form, or else laminar plates, one could quickly scan through samples of corals that can take similar forms. Something analogous to the way that some fish id books that are organized by body shape, rather than strictly order, genus, species.

But I'm not sure it would ever work. So many coral genuses and species seem to occur in so many different forms.

Frogfish

Finally back on-line. It's really hard on my system to be unconnected! I agree with Alex's first guess - the darker spots are just normal parts of the Linckia.

Hi Robert,

I think the first is a juvenile Lobophilia sp coral. I could be wrong.

As for the Linkia, they get all sorts of parasites. The most common is what looks like a half a scallop shell stuck on the starfish. They are usually 2mm or so in diameter. What you've shown in your photo looks a bit different, but I bet it's the same idea. Goole on "Linkia parasites" and you'll find all sorts of stuff.

Cheers

James