Tentacular Lobes

[ATJ]

Eric,
You were going to post a picture showing tentacular lobes.

Aquarium Corals has a picture of Fungia scutaria with tentacular lobes expanded but the picture is not clear.

I have a close-up picture of the tentacles of my Fungia sp. at http://atj777.tripod.com/Fungia_sp_.html (scroll down to the bottom). I can't see any lobes on the tentacles, do I assume there are none there?

 

[Eric Borneman]

Andrew, the lobes refer to skeletal features, not the tentacles. Look at the drawing on the bottom left of Veron 2001, p. 258 of Fungia scutaria. See those rounded lobes on the septa? Dat's dem.

Eric

 

[ATJ]

Eric,
Then how can you have a picture in Aquarium Corals with them "expanded"? As I said, the picture is not clear, but it is of an expanded polyp. Now I am confused.

 

[Eric Borneman]

where is it in the book? That sounds like an error thats needs correcting for the next rum if it is true

 

[ATJ]

Eric,
I don't have the book handy, but from memory it is in the middle of the Fungiidae section. The picture is the bottom right picture on a left page, in amongst other pictures of Fungia spp. and some other genera.

 

[ATJ]

Eric,
The photo is on page 254 of Aquarium Corals.

I looked at the diagram in Veron (2000) - page 2:258 and can see the lobes. However, on page 2:281 there is a photograph of F. scutaria and the caption calls these septal lobes. On page 2:268 there is a picture of F. fungites with tentacular lobes which are "distinctly coloured". There appear to be no obvious skeletal differences (at least in the pictures) between F. grandulosa (page 2:276) and F. puishani (page 2:277) and yet the former has wide tentacular lobes and the latter has none.

Anyway, I think my Fungia sp. is a F. scaba.