Simulating and quantifying the environmental influence on coral colony growth and form

Understanding the growth process of scleractinian corals is crucial to study their role in the marine ecosystem and to obtain insight into their susceptibility to changes in the external physical environment. In this chapter, we describe a method for obtaining three-dimensional images of coral colonies and quantifying morphological properties of complex-shaped colonies. We introduce a method to simulate the accretive growth process in corals and models for simulating the influence of light on the local growth process and the influence of advection-diffusion on the local absorption of nutrients (e.g., inorganic carbon) at the surface of the coral. The morphometric analysis can be used to do a quantitative comparison of real and simulated forms and to identify missing parameters in the growth model. The model of the physical environment can be used to study the hydrodynamics and local distribution of nutrients and light in coral morphologies