DOES POLYP SIZE CONSTRAIN THE ARCHITECTURAL DIVERSITY OF CORAL COLONIES?
Marcos S. Barbeitos*, University at Buffalo, Department of Biological Sciences, 109 Cooke Hall, Buffalo NY 14260-1300 Morphological variation in scleractinian colonies has been the subject of intense research. Most studies have approached the matter from a functional perspective, without evaluating the importance of putative architectural constraints. This might compromise the understanding of morphological evolution in the group. For instance, if the co- occurrence of certain morphological traits in sympatric species appears to be the product of convergent evolution, one is likely to propose natural selection as the cause behind the observed pattern. Although not necessarily wrong, this approach overlooks the possibility of convergence imposed by the organisms’ constructional morphology. In other words, some combinations of characters are observed because alternative combinations cannot exist. I hypothesize that the architectural diversity of coral colonies is constrained by polyp siz
