The proposal seeks partial funding (50% cost share) for the publication of a monograph revising the systematics of two genera of scleractinian corals within the Caribbean region during Neogene time. The monograph has been reviewed and formally accepted by the Bulletins of American Paleontology as a separate volume in part of a series on the Neogene Paleontology of the northern Dominican Republic. Its contents provide a detailed documentation of the protocol and rationale underlying morphometric analyses performed in research funded by NSF grant no. BSR 8605277. The monograph is unique in being one of the first systematic treatments in reef corals to use a rigorous quantitative approach in the recognition of species, as well as in tracing the distributions of morphospecies through space and time. A total of nine species are recognized altogether, resulting in the synonymy of five of 16 previously reported species in the Caribbean Neogene. Only three of these species are found to have survived until the Recent, and only two to extend back into Oligocene time.
