Variation on the morphological features of coral Echinopora lamellosa population suggests corals survivorship mechanisms in Alas Strait, Indonesia

Morphological features of coral are excellent in reflecting the influences of environmental factors and the coral physiology condition. Several major bleaching episode have occurs in Lombok waters and Alas Strait, and morphological features of the surviving coral could provide information related to their survivorship mechanism. We assessed both the non-morphometric and morphometric aspects of 30 photo samples of Echinopora lamellosa coral from northern and southern region of the Alas Strait. The UPGMA (Unweighted-Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean) dendogram was constructed by using IBM SPSS v2.1 to cluster the coral morphological variation. The results showed that the morphology of E. lamellosa from northern region was more varied than those from southern region. Examination on both morphometric and non-morphometric aspect indicate the possibility of corals in the Alas Strait (especially corals from northern region of the strait) to have survived the bleaching episode through the presence of varied coral symbiont and water turbidity. Thus, the results of this study are crucial to confirm a posibble explanation for corals survivorship mechanisms in Alas Strait.