Montipora setosa variation

BradB · Dec 4, 2019

I have seen a lot of different colors of Montipora setosa, from almost brown, bright red, all shades of orange. I've seen lots of shapes as well - encrusting, branching, to almost plating styles.

My question is whether there is essentially 1 type of Montipora setosa, and it changes based on tank conditions. Or if there are many different varieties? I've never seen a tank with 2 completely different setosas, and I recently replaced a colony I had for years that I lost, and the new frag seems to be turning the color and shape of my old colony.

Will Wohlers · Dec 4, 2019

BradB said:
I have seen a lot of different colors of Montipora setosa, from almost brown, bright red, all shades of orange. I've seen lots of shapes as well - encrusting, branching, to almost plating styles.

My question is whether there is essentially 1 type of Montipora setosa, and it changes based on tank conditions. Or if there are many different varieties? I've never seen a tank with 2 completely different setosas, and I recently replaced a colony I had for years that I lost, and the new frag seems to be turning the color and shape of my old colony.

There's even rainbow grafted that is red orange and green in the same piece. The only way to answer your question would be to glue them all together and see how they grow.

I do suspect though coral taxonomy is really a barely scraped surface and i suspect there are actually many different subspecies of lots of corals we lump as one identical species (especially acropora and montipora). For example I have 10 totally different variations of montipora digitata (all different in color, growth, structure, even polyp size) and none I've found in the 10 I have can be spliced together to form a true graft. They end up killing one another and receding where the two different variations touch or one out grows and takes over the other.

TheShrimpNibbler · Dec 4, 2019

Will Wohlers said:
There's even rainbow grafted that is red orange and green in the same piece. The only way to answer your question would be to glue them all together and see how they grow.

I do suspect though coral taxonomy is really a barely scraped surface and i suspect there are actually many different subspecies of lots of corals we lump as one identical species (especially acropora and montipora). For example I have 10 totally different variations of montipora digitata (all different in color, growth, structure, even polyp size) and none I've found in the 10 I have can be spliced together to form a true graft. They end up killing one another and receding where the two different variations touch or one out grows and takes over the other.

Perhaps some of the “variations” of corals aren’t even the same coral. Just misidentified species... This is really an interesting topic that I don’t think is discussed or researched enough.

BradB · Dec 4, 2019

Species, grafting and color are all different. Most caps can be grafted, but are completely different colors in the same tank. And species are constantly changing as biologists recategorize.

Will Wohlers · Dec 5, 2019

BradB said:
Species, grafting and color are all different. Most caps can be grafted, but are completely different colors in the same tank. And species are constantly changing as biologists recategorize.

On one side of the argument yes, but if it's the exact same down to a species level then you should be able to actually graft them together (in the literal sense of the definition, not the green florescent pigment transfers we as reefers have termed grafting) with some success.

Take all the different tenius available for example. I've had great success grafting different strains together, that were obviously totally different origins and appearances. I know of a couple other reefers that have successfully done the same thing or similar experiments. There's a guy on here matter of fact that successfully grafted a Walt Disney and a home wrecker together.

While I'm no coral biologist and my experiences are anecdotal at best. I know there are several different either species or subspecies of montipora "digitata" that are only recognized as montipora digitata.

Coral taxonomy still is in its infancy and I think as far as we've come in the past 15 years, there will be a lot more species and possibly subspecies added and even subtracted from the list of known species today. As far as we've come, we still know very little about the animals we all obsess over as reefers, and i think hobbyists pushing the level of scientific knowledge the past 15 or 20 years is why we've moved so much further from where we were.

Nano427 · Dec 5, 2019

Setosa will definitely encrust and branch. Although I haven’t seen it plate, I wouldn’t doubt that it could grow off of a ledge in a plate like manner. I believe that the coloration is mostly due to tank conditions and lighting, but bright orange to red is all I’ve ever seen. My guess would be any brown or other colors are due to less than ideal conditions for the setosa. So while there may be different appearances of setosa I think that us in the hobby share the same variety.