Barnes' Technique Amended for Analyzing Fabric and Cavity Development in Coral Reef Communities

This paper describes and illustrates a method of sequentially 1) staining growth markers on calcareous coral skeletons with Alizarin Red S; 2) staining their associated tissues and organic matter with Harris' Haematoxylin and Eosin immediately on killing; and 3) impregnating them with polyester...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of paleontology 1974-01, Vol.48 (4), p.769-777
Main Authors: J. A. E. B. Hubbard, Barnes
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohols
Carbonates
Communities
Corals
Dyes
Porosity
Sea water
Sediments
Skeleton
Specimens
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper describes and illustrates a method of sequentially 1) staining growth markers on calcareous coral skeletons with Alizarin Red S; 2) staining their associated tissues and organic matter with Harris' Haematoxylin and Eosin immediately on killing; and 3) impregnating them with polyester resin so that they may be studied in the same way as ordinary rock samples. The combined staining and impregnating of communities immediately after death has many advantages: 1) Comparable preservational states can be recognized in three dimensional studies of both recent and fossil materials; 2) the relationship between living soft tissues and newly developed carbonate matter can be studied in a single specimen; 3) skeletal malformations and skeletal diagenetic products can be distinguished readily; 4) comparative growth and destruction rates may be studied in the host and its associated intraskeletal community and epibionts; and 5) the development of porosity and incipient cavity filling can be distinguished. A specimen of the scleractinian coral Eusmilia fastigiata (Pallas) and its associated biotic community, used to demonstrate the method, was kept alive in an artifically lit open sea water system in Miami, Florida, for 56 days. During this period it was found that the rates of secretions varied from organism to organism, and the rates, placed in declining order are: encrusting worms, encrusting red algae, bivalve, coral. The worms secreted a maximum extension of 12 mm per month and the red algae 3 mm, whereas the bivalve and coral only achieved a matter of microns. Simultaneously the isolation of stained cavities and incipient cavity filling suggests that at least four phases of fluid migrations can be distinguished during the development of both cavity and infilling.
ISSN:0022-3360
1937-2337