Shelby E. Gantt
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xestysponge.bsky.social
Shelby E. Gantt
@xestysponge.bsky.social
250 followers 90 following 3 posts
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow @BostonUniversity studying #sex-specific influences of #climatechange on #corals, alumni @kemp_lab @UABBiology, @imesalab @UNCW; views are my own
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Reposted by Shelby E. Gantt
calebcbutler.com
Interestingly, last time I was in the field, one of my collaborators (@xestysponge.bsky.social) snapped an image of many Fungiid's aggregated together.

I am uncertain if this is a monospecific pairing (and wouldn't trust without genetic evidence first), but it's a very fascinating behavior.
A top-down image of a very crowded reef in Palau. There are lots of smaller colonies of branching corals of various shapes, sizes, and genera-species (notably, some Pocillopora, Seriatopora, Acropora, likely others). There are also some green grass-like sprouts here and there of kelp, but not much. The focal point of this image are a large number of disc-shaped Fungiids in multiple aggregations. They are all uniform in shape and size however, but do differ greatly in color. Some are light brown, dark brown, orange-ish brown, and there is one very unique one that is green. Some of them have pretty purple splotches on them as well. It is diffuclt to tell for certain as there's a branching coral on top of it, but there may also be a dark red one. There are a couple small (1-2 inch) long bright blue fish around in the image as well.
January 27, 2025 at 1:30 PM