How rare ...

... in the waters near Antigua?

I had always thought these were quite rare ... I've only seen one once or twice before this past week, but a local told me they were almost as common as flamingo tongues.

I had heard - in the Caymans at least - that there were 10,000 flamingo tongues for every fingerprint cyphoma.

Thanks!

Fingerprint Cyphoma

Fingerprints live throughout the Caribbean and it's true that in general they are rarer than flamingos. Distribution is spotty - as you've been told they can occur in large numbers in some areas. They're specialized predators on Plexaurella gorgonians while flamingos eat gorgonians in several genera so they're only found in areas where Plexaurella occurs. It's not know what other factors cause their rarity. One interesting thing is that they cause much more damage than flamingos which eat only the polyps. A healthy gorgonian can regrow polyps faster than flamingos can eat them. Fingerprints on the other hand, eat polyps & branch matrix down to the core. Enough of them on one gorgonian will eventually kill it.

Fingerprints live throughout the Caribbean and it's true that in general they are rarer than flamingos. Distribution is spotty - as you've been told they can occur in large numbers in some areas. They're specialized predators on Plexaurella gorgonians while flamingos eat gorgonians in several genera so they're only found in areas where Plexaurella occurs. It's not know what other factors cause their rarity. One interesting thing is that they cause much more damage than flamingos which eat only the polyps. A healthy gorgonian can regrow polyps faster than flamingos can eat them. Fingerprints on the other hand, eat polyps & branch matrix down to the core. Enough of them on one gorgonian will eventually kill it.

Thanks! Very helpful!

Interesting ...

"When large, predatory fishes and invertebrates were excluded from areas of a coral reef in the Florida Keys, USA, densities of the normally rare gastropod Cyphoma gibbosum, a principal predator of gorgonian corals, increased 19-fold. Gorgonians in predator exclosures were grazed more frequently and extensively by C. gibbosum than were gorgonians in uncaged areas. In exclosures, 14% of all gorgonians showed recent predation by C. gibbosum, with 62% of the entire colony surface being removed from these attacked individuals. In areas where predators of C. gibbosum were not excluded, only 5% of gorgonians exhibited recent damage, with only 26% of the colony surface being removed from these few damaged individuals. Thus, the increases in both frequency and extent of attack combined to produce an 8× increase in gorgonian damage following removal of large predators. These patterns suggest that predators typically suppress C. gibbosum populations, that overfishing of these predators could release C. gibbosum from top-down control, and that this release will allow increased damage to gorgonian corals."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/3v87uh020340511p/

Yup, removal of large predators affects everything. that's why it's so bad for a reef system when sharks, groupers, parrots, & other large fish are overfished.

Here's another article for you - it's on selection predation by fingerprints & includes a photo of the severe damage caused by grazing -

http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/65/m065p265.pdf

Thanks to Jeremy and Leslie for the links and info. The Cayman ratio may or may not be an exaggeration I guess, depending on the species of gorgonians that are available. Around Key West, for every ten Cyphoma gibbosum you find, you will find about three Cyphoma mcgintyi, and about one Cyphoma signatum. Not 1 to 10,000, but they are considerably less common.

Cheers,

Don