9724759 CORNELL Professors Howard Cornell and Ronald Karlson of the Department of Biology at the University of Delaware, and Dr. Terence P. Hughes of the Department of Marine Biology of James Cook University, Australia, will sample corals in six sectors of increasing regional species richness across the Indo-West and Central Pacific Ocean to quantitatively evaluate the relative influence of regional and local processes on local richness. Data will be collected on species presence, relative abundance, habitat breadth, and depth range of selected species to test the effects of the increasing regional pool on local richness, evenness, habitat compression, and habitat overlap. This synthesis of regional and local perspectives should provide an integrated conceptual framework not only for basic studies of community ecology but also for applied problems associated with species extinctions, habitat loss and fragmentation, and ecological restoration.
