CoenoGuides: Scleractinian identification guides

• Main Authors: Licuanan, Wilfredo Y., Luzon, Katrina S., Reboton, Clarissa, Huang, Danwei
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2010
• Subjects: Scleractinia—Identification; Biology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/7622
• Institution: De La Salle University

"Coeno" - Greek koinos, meaning "common." The CoenoGuide, a series of electronic (pelf) form identification guides to families under Phylum Cnidaria, Order Scleractinia, are introduced. They are one of the products that will be made available for free in Coenomap (http://coenomap.philreefs.org/), a web site that was designed to encourage and facilitate the identification of coral species and the mapping of their distributions in the Philippines. AH the guides feature many images of the coral species, either of the living coral, or both the Jiving coral and its skeleton. AH guides, initially, are location specific, following J.E.N. Veron's dictum that species boundaries for valid species may blur at larger geographic scales. They will also be family-specific, to keep the file sizes to manageable levels and make them accessible to those with poor internet connections or limited bandwidth. Most authors are also not consistently reliable across families, so users should be able to choose from possible alternative CoenoGuides for a given family. Since the CoenoGuides are electronic, new versions can easily be made and distributed to reflect corrections, taxonomic revisions, and improvements in the images and information contained. More importantly, CoenoGuides can be the vehicle to move coral taxonomy (at least in the Philippines) farther from a slow-changing, expert-based discipline to one that is more dynamic and consensus-based. Where consensus cannot be achieved, alternative schemes may eventually be made available in Coenomap. The schemes that work best will likely be downloaded more than others or will have more favorable comments in associated blogs. Everyone is thus encouraged to collaborate and develop CoenoGuides, or improve existing ones, and be recognized as a contributor or author, and advance coral research and monitoring in the country