Dispersal patterns of the corals in the Indo-West Pacific: towards the understanding of the biodiversity in Vietnamese waters

Abstract

The Anthozoans are important components of marine ecosystems. Among them the stony corals, Scleractinia, are very remarkable and frame-building animals of coral reefs in tropical zones. The role of Octocorallia, i.e. soft corals, sea fans and sea pens, in the reef-building process is also important andthese corals also deserve attention due to their abundance in marine bottom ecosystems as well as a source of the pharmacologically important compounds. The study ofOctocorallia species richness is substantially in the frame of worldwide and local biodiversity problems. Inrecent years we have found that the contemporary biodiversity of the soft corals in the central area of the Vietnam coastal waters essentially exceeds the same in the Indo- Malayan Centre of Marine Biodiversity (or Coral Triangle). As it was assumedframingthe last decade investigations, solvingcomplex problems of the taxonomy, genetic diversity and species-specific ecology areneeded to trace the possible ways for soft coral dispersal.