Nutritional resources as positional information for morphogenesis in the Stony Coral

Michael Kücken (1) , Baruch Rinkevich , Lee Shaish , Andreas Deutsch (1)

1 TU Dresden - Technische Universität Dresden = Dresden University of Technology

We are interested in deciphering the mechanisms for morphogenesis in the Red Sea scleractinian coral with the help of mathematical models. Previous mathematical models for coral morphogenesis assume that skeletal growth is proportional to the amount of locally available energetic resources like diffusible nutrients and photosynthetic products. We introduce a new model which includes factors like dissolved nutrients and photosynthates, but these resources do not serve as building blocks for growth but rather provide some kind of positional information for coral morphogenesis. Depending on this positional information side branches are generated, splittings of branches take place and branch growth direction is determined. The model results are supported by quantitative comparisons with experimental data obtained from young coral colonies.

Mots clés: Coral morphogenesis

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Michael Kücken, Baruch Rinkevich, Lee Shaish, Andreas Deutsch. Nutritional resources as positional information for morphogenesis in the Stony Coral. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2011, 275 (1), pp.70. ⟨10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.01.018⟩. ⟨hal-00676095⟩