Chapter 8 



Scleractinia (Ston\; Corals) of Enewetak Atoll 



DENNIS M. DEVANEY* (deceased) and 

 JUDITH C. LANGt 



' B. P. Bishop Museum. Honolulu, Hawaii 9681 7 

 f Uniuersiti^ of Texas at Austin. Department of Zoolog\). 

 Austin. Texas 78712. and Texas Memorial Museum, 

 Austin. Texas 78705 



The first record of stony corals from Enewetak Atoll, in 

 which five species were reported, app)ears to have been 

 that of Yabe et al. (1936). 



Wells (1954) later made a major systematic study of 

 the corals of the Marshall Islands. Of 254 species and 

 varieties in 57 genera recorded overall from this region, 

 only 44 scleractinian species were listed as occurring at 

 Enewetak. This disparity is understandable because much 

 of the collecting effort was concentrated at Bikini Atoll. 

 Most of these specimens are now deposited at the U. S. 

 National Museum of Natural History (USNM). 



When the Mid-Pacific Research Laboratory (MPRL) was 

 established in 1954, one of its first goals was to have a 

 labeled set of stony corals available for use by investigators 

 at the laboratory. Specimens collected by R. Iverson at 

 Enewetak in 1955 were partitioned among 115 sclerac- 

 tinian species by J. W. Wells and formed the nucleus of 

 the MPRL reference collection. A list of the corals col- 

 lected during the classical field study by Odum and Odum 

 (1955) at Enewetak, and subsequently identified by Dr. 

 Wells, was published by Odum and Odum in 1956. 



In the summer of 1970, R. H. Randall collected 357 

 scleractinian specimens for an investigation of growth form 

 and variation (Randall, 1971). As a result of this effort, 21 

 specimens were added to the Enewetak reference collec- 

 tion (the balance remains at the University of Guam Marine 

 Laboratory). Weber and Haggerty (1976) collected stony 

 corals of 48 genera and subgenera for stable isotopic stud- 

 ies of skeletal calcification. By then the coral reference col- 

 lection at Enewetak contained representatives of about 

 124 species and varieties. 



A more intensive effort was made to identify Enewetak 

 scleractinians during the 1976 reef coral workshop. An 

 international team of coral systematists from the United 

 States, Australia, England, France, and the Netherlands 

 gathered under the direction of J. C. Lang to (a) up>date 



the reference collection with a set of labeled coral speci- 

 mens representative of each major reef habitat at 

 Enewetak and (b) prepare a' reef coral field identification 

 guide for general use by scientists working at Enewetak. It 

 was also hoped that the specimens and accompanying field 

 observations would be used in individual systematic publi- 

 cations of the Enewetak scleractinians. 



To date, approximately 170 sp>ecies in 54 genera have 

 been identified among the 2500 stony coral specimens 

 which were collected from 28 sites around Enewetak Atoll. 

 These have been deposited in major museums (B. P. 

 Bishop Museum, United States National Museum, British 

 Museum [Natural History], Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke 

 Historie, Queensland Museum), as well as in the Enewetak 

 reference collection. 



Although the field guide is still in preparation, a provi- 

 sional checklist of scleractinian corals now believed to 

 occur at Enewetak is presented in Table 1. In many fami- 

 lies, the species-level classification generally follows that 

 given in the recent publications about eastern Australian 

 scleractinians by Veron and Pichon (1976, 1980, 1982), 

 by Veron, Pichon, and Wijsman-Best (1977), and by Veron 

 and Wallace (1984). Ecological and zoogeographic con- 

 siderations will await the completed guide. 



Stony corals collected at Enewetak during the 

 workshop have contributed to several revisionary sys- 

 tematic studies. For example, range extensions were made 

 by Wallace (1978) for species of Acropora; by Dinesen 

 (1980) for a species of Leptoseris; and by Wijsman-Best 

 (1980) for species in three faviid genera (Ci;phastrea, Lap- 

 tastrea, Echinopora). Lamberts (1980, 1982) has also used 

 Enewetak specimens to revise the genus Astreopora. Six 

 of the nine species of Astreopora (two of which are new 

 species) recognized by Lamberts (1982) have been col- 

 lected at Enewetak, while two others occur elsewhere in 

 the Marshall Islands. 



In addition to these systematic studies, there are 

 numerous publications on scleractinian biology or geology 

 which have resulted from field work and collections made 

 at Enewetak. A selection of these references, with the gen- 

 era examined, is presented in Table 2. The authors of 

 these nonsystematic papers are also cited in Table 1 under 

 any species names given for these genera. 



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