Coral ID is the name of a compact disc which is basically the digital edition of the ultimate guide to stony coral identification from JEN Veron, Corals of the World. Covering over nearly a thousand coral species with 2500 color photographs, Coral ID will soon fill the role that the online Coral Search resource from AIMS used to provide. Although the book usually costs in the neighborhood of $150 and the disc has commanded upwards of $80, the entire work is scheduled to be published online in 2010 within the AIMS website. When it comes to stony coral taxonomy, there is no more complete work than the Coral ID/COTW volumes. With 800 distribution maps and intensive keys to species traits, the free availability of taxonomic coral information ought to keep people from referring to certain large polyped mussids from Australia as Acanthastrea maxima, a species which is only found in the Red Sea and waters of the middle east. The body of knowledge contained within this work has thus far been primarily skewed towards photosynthetic corals of the Indo-Pacific, with a heavy emphasis on Australian species; let’s hope that the fresh publication of Coral ID online will show a little more attention to the Azooxanthellate stony corals and species that come from the tropical western Atlantic Ocean including the Caribbean Sea and Brazil.
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