Coral - January/February 2010

these larvae are eaten by the corals, so they have a low rate of survival. It is erroneous to assume that densely populated reefs encourage biodiversity; on the contrary, they reduce it!

There are only a few hundred species of corals and around 500 fish species on tropical coral reefs (here). That may seem ridiculous in the case of the Philippines, with their fantastic biodiversity in terms of other groups of animals. A biodiversity “hotspot” such as the island of Balicasag harbors around 5,000 mollusk species, 900 crustacean taxa, and many thousands of species belonging to other groups. Only a few species can compete successfully with corals in the battle for habitat. The winners are often coral parasites such as mollusks of the families Ovulidae and Coralliophilidae. I assume that the same applies to the dominant species of worms, crustaceans, etc.

It is true that a reef damaged by dynamite is far from an attractive sight, leaving aside the fact that this method of fishing poses major dangers for the fishermen themselves: many of them lose hands, arms, and all too frequently even their lives due to accidents during the explosion. For these reasons alone, fishing with dynamite should cease. I don’t know precisely how disastrous the consequences of fishing with cyanide are, but I would imagine there could hardly be a worse method of collecting fishes.

CORAL: In addition to numerous other malacological collections that you have built up and made available to international museums, your Institute in Cebu, on the island of Mactan, is home to a collection of marine-snail shells that is probably one of the most comprehensive in the world. What is particularly special about this collection, and how do scientists all over the world gain access to it?

Poppe: The Philippine Collection of
Conchology, Inc. is certainly not the
largest collection in the world, but it
is, without doubt, the most compre-
hensive and best-documented col-
lection of Philippine marine snails.
Around 1865, Hugh Cuming spent
three years collecting specimens in
the Philippines, and his collection is
now in the British Natural History
Museum. Many Philippine species
were described by European scientists
on the basis of his material. Later,
around 1904, the American research
vessel Albatross made collections for
the U.S. in coastal waters around the
Philippines, and a short time later,
staff from the Paris Museum combed
the deeper waters of the archipelago
in search of new species, discovering
hundreds, if not thousands.