What part of the world has the largest variety of corals?
I'm fascinated by corals. I've been told there are more than a thousand varieties spread out in bodies of water throughout the world.
What part of the world has the most varieties of corals in a concentrated area?
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What part of the world has the most varieties of corals in a concentrated area?
Of coarse this question can only be qualified by an accurate definition of what the OP means by a concentrated area. In any case I am going to put in my two bits worth.
Distribution of the world’s coral reefs (red). Blue areas indicate areas in which zooxanthellate corals occur.
The Indonesian/Philippines archipelago has the world’s greatest concentration of reefs and the greatest coral diversity. Other area of reef concentration are the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the Red Sea and the Caribbean, the latter having a much lower diversity than all major Indo-Pacific regions. The reefs and coral faunas of geological intervals are a combination of inheritance from the past and the outcome of more contemporary events. The distribution of modern reefs are an inheritance of the Tethys-dominated world of the Eocene, subsequently modified by the obliteration of both the Tethys Seaway (Miocene) and the Central American Seaway (Pliocene).
Reefs and coral distributions
It is true that without corals there can be no coral reefs, however it is not true that without reefs there are no corals. Rather the opposite: there are at least as many corals (excluding azooxanthellate species) growing in environments that will not support reef development as there are in environments that will. This is because of the constraints of temperature, light availability, sediment load, depth and (lack of) turbulence, all of which may act independently or in various combinations to prevent reef growth. These environmental constraints clearly interlink to produce habitats in which corals might flourish yet do not produce skeletons quickly enough to overcome erosion, or where encrusting coralline algae do not grow. Without the cementing action of algae, coral debris remains unconsolidated and can be swept away by storm waves. Many places where corals are abundant illustrate this; for example, the sea off the northern coast of central Australia is shallow and moderately turbid. There are no reefs, yet 60% of all Great Barrier Reef species grow there, some forming colonies as big and healthy as those on any reef. Long-term ecological issues aside, almost all species of Indo-Pacific corals grow as well in non-reef habitats as they do on reefs.
Reefs and coral diversity
These is a widely held misconception that reef growth is somehow dependent on coral diversity, probably stemming from the observation that most reefs occur where coral diversity is at least moderately high. However, reefs of the Caribbean have a lower diversity than most Indo-Pacific reefs, and well-formed reefs of the Abrolhos Islands of Brazil have less than 20 species. Clipperton Atoll in the far eastern Pacific has actively growing reefs which provide significant habitat diversity yet only seven species of coral occur there, just three of which contribute to reef-building. - Coral Fact Sheets (Australian Government / Australian Institute of Marine Science)
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Misamis Oriental. Philippines. Running out to the Spartly islands. Varied rock formations & depth of water. Different currents at sea. But you need travel to see the different ones. Each area differs. Not many tour dives.
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