A large aggregation of self-fragmenting mushroom corals in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

Abstract

[No abstract available]

The Arabian/Persian Gulf is a relatively shallow, semi‐enclosed sea at high tropical latitudes, surrounded by desert land with limited water exchange, high salinities, and extreme annual fluctuations of surface temperatures (Sheppard et al. 1992). These conditions restrict the Gulf's marine biodiversity, as demonstrated by the mushroom coral family Fungiidae (Scleractinia). In the Gulf, this family has only been known to be represented by the free‐living (unattached) species, Cycloseris curvata (Hoeksema, 1989), which is considered uncommon (Riegl et al. 2012), whereas this coral family consists of 52 described species in the entire tropical Indo‐Pacific, 40 of which are unattached (Benzoni et al. 2012).