Coral Reef Aquaria
These aquaria present two different reef ecosystems — the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean:
The Indo-Pacific
The Indo-Pacific region is a huge area — larger than the continental U.S. — and home to most of the world's coral reefs. These reefs contain an astonishing diversity of species, perhaps half of all species in the sea, including 700 species of coral and perhaps 3,000 species of fish, among many others. Scientists are still discovering new species here every year. But these reefs are threatened by human activities, from overfishing to pollution to climate change.
The aquarium features branching and plating stony corals of the Acropora and Montipora genera. Together with other stony corals, soft corals, giant clams, other invertebrates and fish, the Indo-Pacific coral reef represents one of the most biologically diverse environments on earth.
The Caribbean
The western Atlantic and Caribbean region is much smaller than the Indo-Pacific, and both the region and individual reefs harbor fewer species. But these reefs — which include the only coral reefs in North America (in the Florida Keys) — are home to more than 65 species of corals and perhaps 700 species of fish, among many others. These reefs, however, are in extremely poor health, due to a combination of climate change, overfishing, and pollution.
The Caribbean aquarium features soft corals, gorgonians, anemones, and sponges, and a small selection of stony corals typical of Florida Caribbean reefs. Notable by their absence are the reef-building staghorn and elkhorn branching stony corals, which have disappeared from Caribbean waters in the last 30 years.
More About Corals
Coral reefs are home to the most biodiverse communities in the oceans, and provide abundant ecosystem services to humans. But reefs today are threatened by numerous environmental changes caused by human activity. A 13-year-old student at Ithaca’s Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School got passionately interested in these threats, and made this video about what she learned, with a little help from PRI staff.
Modern coral reefs are under threat, but fossil collections--including those at the Paleontological Research Institution--can help scientists predict which species are most at risk and which are most likely to survive environmental stresses such as climate change, ocean acidification, and physical disturbance. Species that inhabit marginal reef refugia might be most likely to survive extinction events and then re-colonize shallow reef areas afterwards.
More About the Exhibit
Biology & Environment
Corals are animals — although it’s a little complicated. All corals in these systems rely on light for food, usually the sole preserve of plants. However these corals, as is typical of reef building corals, have a symbiotic relationship with a type of algae that lives in their tissue. The algae in turn use light through the process of photosynthesis to generate sugars that in turn feed the coral.
Even in these reef aquaria we can observe many unique and diverse interactions found on wild coral reefs including symbiotism, reproduction, predation, and competition.
Coral reefs are threatened and we are likely to witness dramatic changes over the next 20-50 years that could make much of life in these two aquaria extinct in our or our children’s lifetime.
The Caribbean aquarium includes a selection of live stony corals that make this one of the few public displays in North America of these threatened animals.
Chemistry
Scientists have a good handle on the inorganic chemistry of saltwater. We use measurements of pH, nitrogen compounds (e.g. nitrate), phosphate, calcium, and carbonate alkalinity to replicate natural seawater and maintain a healthy ecosystem.
Scientists know very little about the organic chemistry of coral reef environments but are starting to discover intricate and unique modes of chemical defense and attack including some compounds of human pharmaceutical potential. Researchers are now using techniques used to establish and maintain these aquaria in laboratory settings to further study organic chemistry on the reef.
Reef aquaria are tremendously effective and interactive tools to teach chemistry as well as the biological sciences.
Physical
Each aquarium system on display holds approximately 500 US gallons of seawater.
The weight of each aquarium full of saltwater is approximately two tons.
The pumping system on each aquarium moves more than ten thousand gallons per hour, replicating the high energy coral reef environment.
Inter-Species Aggression and Protection
Corals are typically immobile animal colonies. There are exceptions to this with anemones and some corals capable of relatively slow movement but all are potentially vulnerable to predation simply because of their inability to easily avoid animals that may want to eat them. Typically stony corals only reveal their soft tissues at night when the coral polyps open up to feed on zooplankton. During the day, they use their hard coral skeleton to protect the polyp from browsing fish such as many butterfly fish that prey on corals. As encountered with terrestrial plants and some insects and animals, a common alternative to protection is to produce chemicals that are toxic to predators or at least “make yourself unpalatable.” Across the soft and stony coral species, we are starting to learn of some unique and highly evolved means of chemical and biological defense. Complicated organic molecules are being discovered that are linked to the defense system of many corals and other marine invertebrates. Some of these chemicals are also used to compete between species for space. Analogous to trees growing in the forest, there is competition for sunlight to fuel their biologic processes and so many corals are observed to attack each other when they sense each other’s presence.
Of increasing interest is investigating the chemicals produced by corals and other marine animals to help cure human disease. Many of these biologically active chemicals have the potential for helping design drugs to treat cancer, pain, neurological, cardiovascular diseases and other difficult to treat ailments. There are 18 drugs based on chemicals found in the marine environment currently in clinical trials and hundreds more identified as having pharmaceutical potential. The risk to this pipeline of disease-curing drug discovery is of course the loss of the very animals that produce them and the environment they live in.
A note about environmental concerns
Both aquaria have been custom designed and built for maximum educational potential and minimal environmental impact. Corals have been aquacultured or maricultured while the fish are either tank-bred or collected with strong emphasis on sustainability. Modern pumping and lighting technology has been used to replicate the shallow tropical coral reefs while minimizing electrical usage.
Brief History of Coral Study at PRI
Over the years there have been many associates of PRI and The Museum of the Earth who have worked on collecting and researching fossil corals. Below is a list of a few notable people and a brief summary of their work.
John Wells
John Wells was a very well respected authority on corals in the Paleontology community. While attending Pittsburgh University he met a geology professor named Henry Leighton. Leighton was a Cornell University graduate and sensing Wells’ interest in geology, suggested that Wells also take classes in biology. Wells took these classes at Cornell (which was a short distance from his home in Homer, NY) and here met and worked for PRI founder Gilbert Harris. This began his long relationship with PRI and the larger Paleontology community.
He wrote over 175 scientific papers on corals with over half of them regarding his greatest interest — Scleractinian corals. Many of these papers were published in PRI’s journals published by Gilbert Harris. Wells worked mainly on Mesozoic to modern coral but did do some research on the Devonian corals located in New York State. It was work on Devonian corals that led him to hypothesize that the earth was turning around 400 times a year during the Devonian as opposed to the modern 365. This was a revolutionary idea that was shown by counting the daily growth rings with simple instruments and measurements. This find lead to the conclusion that the Earth’s rotation has been gradually slowing over time which is an important idea when understanding our planet’s history.
Wells donated his personal scientific library collection to PRI shortly before his death in 1994. The collection was estimated to be the largest private collection about fossil and modern corals in the world. These books are now housed in the John Wells Rare Book Room that was built in 1996. Wells was a board member at PRI from 1959-1963 and 1980-1981. He also served as President of PRI from 1961-1963.
James (Jim) Sorauf
James Sorauf focused on fossil corals mainly from the Devonian period. During his studies, he collected corals in North America and Europe. Much of his vast collections are housed in the PRI Systematic Collections.
Sorauf was a professor of Geology at Binghamton University from 1962 until his retirement in 1997. Sorauf is still active in research. He has begun to study more modern corals. One of his main projects right now is studying the minute details of coral skeletons using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Additionally, he is working with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in St. Petersburg, Florida to research the reefs along the Florida Keys.
Sorauf has written numerous scientific papers on his collections and research several of which were published in Bulletins of American Paleontology, one of PRI’s publications. Sorauf was President of PRI from 1988-1990 and a member of the Board of Trustees in 1983-1997. He remains an Emeritus Trustee to this day.
Bill Klose
While attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Klose collected Middle Devonian reef corals just outside of Albany, NY in the Thompsons Lake bioherm. The specimens that were collected from the Onondaga Limestone are now housed in the Paleontological Research Institute’s Systematic Collection.
Later, while still in school and also serving in the United States Navy, Klose collected Ice Age corals in Southern Florida, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Material collected from Florida was featured in Bulletins of American Paleontology. This material also helped increase the number of recognized species of corals and hydrozoans in the Miami and Key Largo Limestone to 28. The corals that Bill collected in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were from the Jaimanitas Formation. Some of the collected corals were documented in a paper published by the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Many of the best specimens collected during this time are housed in the PRI Systematic Collection and Type & Figured Collection. Bill still volunteers at PRI, helping in the Collections.
Credits
Many of the corals and other reef organisms in the aquaria were donated by Dr. Drew Harvell of Cornell University.
Much of the above text was written by Steve Lowes of Cayuga Aquatics.