REGENERATION OF INJURIES AMONG JAMAICAN GORGONIANS: THE ROLES OF COLONY PHYSIOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT.

The consequences of injury to reef dwelling colonial animals are determined partly by rates of regeneration of lost tissues. These experiments examined two potential influences on regeneration rates of Jamaican gorgonians: 1) intrinsic physiological and energetic differences among co-occurring, conspecific colonies differing in size, reproductive phase, or injury location; and 2) differential responses among three plexaurid species to changing environmental variables across their depth range. In Plexaura homomalla, regeneration rate varied with the location of injury within colonies, but was unexpectedly independent of either colony size or reproductive phase. In addition, colonies of P. homomalla, Eunicea mammosa, and Plexaurella dichotoma differed in relative ability to regenerate equivalent injuries in different reef zones across their depth range. "There is one fact in the life-history of corals which the study of processes of repair clearly brings out, and it is this, that all the methods of regeneration are more for the life-saving of the colony than of the individual." Wood-Jones, 1912.