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What's the life expectancy of individual polyps?


Partially Submerged

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Partially Submerged

The answer is obviously "It depends," but I'm just trying to get an idea. I have this torch coral, which has one head (i.e. one polyp), and it's been pretty much unchanged since I got it nine months ago. It looks perfectly healthy, but it hasn't really grown in size or grown additional heads. Can the torch stay like this for another one, five, or 20 years? Or do the individual polyps expire relatively quickly?

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They have biological immortality, they never age, if there was a perfect place with perfect everything no predators, or any areas for physical injury for this one polyp it would never die. Never ever ever ever.

That applies with every coral and anemone.

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It can take a Torch Coral Frag a couple years to get going. They don't live forever, but if everything works out a few thousand years is a ball park estimate. Unfortunately I am thinking even the best tank is not a perfect environment. How long can you live on a ventilator. Well as long as the machine works I guess. Same with a coral.

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It can take a Torch Coral Frag a couple years to get going. They don't live forever, but if everything works out a few thousand years is a ball park estimate. Unfortunately I am thinking even the best tank is not a perfect environment. How long can you live on a ventilator. Well as long as the machine works I guess. Same with a coral.

 

our tanks are loaded with potential hazards for those corals, they only don't live forever from external forces, not the normal senescence we suffer. Envy the polyp and its ability!
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On a similar note.. since anemones reproduce by splitting, shouldn't that mean that some specimens are thousands of years old, or the genetics at least? Do they "live forever" if they keep splitting and the older ones die?

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On a similar note.. since anemones reproduce by splitting, shouldn't that mean that some specimens are thousands of years old, or the genetics at least? Do they "live forever" if they keep splitting and the older ones die?

I've often wondered about lifespans of coral and other animals which can be propagated via splitting. I'd really appreciate someone posting links to scientific based articles discussing lifespans of coral and anemones. The most common answer I've seen tends to be something like, "Little is known about the lifespan of corals. Generally, coral colonies may live for several decades to centuries."

 

This question is of particular interest when it comes to the lifespan of cultured coral. Will a captive population survive forever (by fragging new colonies) without sexual reproduction?

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Pretty cool thought. Sad to think of how short their lifespans tend to be in a reef tank environment. I mean does anyone have a coral they've kept for more than 10 years. In comparison to centuries old thats pretty bad.

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I mean does anyone have a coral they've kept for more than 10 years.

I have frags of frags that I got about that long ago. I'm sure I'm not alone, I don't think it's nearly as rare as you think. But I do get what you are saying about the comparison.
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We need to remember since there is no ageing there is infinite amount of potential frags to be made.

To think several years from now we will look back and note more of the screw ups we are making right now in coral propagation!

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Need to remember from what? Your saying that in this thread was the first time I've ever heard that they don't age. IDK, maybe you're right; I mean I've never heard the contrary either. Like I said, I've only heard that their lifespan was unknown, not potentially unlimited. Maybe they were just assuming that it was finite due to predation or some other threat. Can you give me some sources that share the hypothesis that they will never die due to aging?

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Need to remember from what? Your saying that in this thread was the first time I've ever heard that they don't age. IDK, maybe you're right; I mean I've never heard the contrary either. Like I said, I've only heard that their lifespan was unknown, not potentially unlimited. Maybe they were just assuming that it was finite due to predation or some other threat. Can you give me some sources that share the hypothesis that they will never die due to aging?

 

My thoughts on that is consider some of your SPS.. what causes polyps to die? Usually being overshadowed by others I assume. In nature, you also have various predators.. If a polyp grew in a spot where it always got good light and was never eaten, it seems like it should live.. forever? Maybe it has a finite life expectancy, but I guess the fact that we don't know it is the whole point of this thread

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Here's a little something, I'll try to get more

http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/pipermail/coral-list/2011-March/009720.html

Need to remember from what? Your saying that in this thread was the first time I've ever heard that they don't age. IDK, maybe you're right; I mean I've never heard the contrary either. Like I said, I've only heard that their lifespan was unknown, not potentially unlimited. Maybe they were just assuming that it was finite due to predation or some other threat. Can you give me some sources that share the hypothesis that they will never die due to aging?

its good you have reasonable doubts, it shows insight in not believing every word you hear :)
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Well it is true that technically it's impossible to know if they are biologically immortal (not age), though they can grow very, very, very, very, very old. Like many plants. Or mushrooms.

 

@hypostatic: Those aren't ages of living corals, that's ages of coral (skeletons) in raised coral reefs of Barbados.

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It's also hard to determine ages for these sort of animals, because they tend to get killed any never live to how old they can, well, live to. Like humans during the middle ages lol.

 

This study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10841935) on Fungias in the Red Sea found that they get to about 30+ years old.

 

Study on porites (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00345677) have found that they can grow quite old as well, though in this case, it is found that whilst porites do grow old, individual polyps only last for 5 or so years, on average.

 

But regardless, it is safe to say I would think, that many of our corals should outlast its tank. :)

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Thanks for posting that info guys. I was wondering if it's possible to keep captive coral populations alive in perpetuity without sexual reproduction. I've assumed that truly sustainable coral farming was possible, but haven't seen positive confirmation of this assumption.

 

It's good to know that it might be possible to maintain captive populations forever without having to harvest wild coral. I'd hate to see it happen; but someday, certain species may live on in captivity, even after they've become extinct in the wild.

 

I'd like to see even more data on this subject (for coral and/or anemones), if anybody is willing to share additional sources.

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To try and get a handle on the coral aging process, scientists have been looking closely at Telemere info:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24601774

 

http://zoolstud.sinica.edu.tw/Journals/51.8/1475.pdf

 

But, it's still a work in progress to be able to say definitively how long a particular coral species can live.

 

I have a few purple Discosoma that have been in my tanks for 17 years old now and I have little doubt that their potential life span far exceeds mine :)

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Partially Submerged

Great replies, thanks, all!

 

To those of you talking about biological immortality in corals, I am almost certain that's not accurate. There are one or several types of polyps/jellyfish that can achieve that by starting the cycle again and again. That's not the case for our corals. Corals can get very, very old because they can create new - genetically identical - polyps, but they are still colonies of many animals. I am pretty certain individual polyps age and die. I will start reading all the links posted here, though.

 

 

 

I thought I posted a reply, but I must have done something weird.....

 

Did a google scholar search for "coral radiometric dating", and found that there are corals with a life span in the order of 50k years:

ijDDreL.png

 

Shi-at, nice find! Those are some old corals. And has only taken us a couple of decades to destroy so many of them. :(

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DNA has a life span. So does RNA. Polyps absolutely age and can die from old age. Nothing can live forever. A cell may divide and pass its genetic material on, and that being a clone, the cell technically "lives forever" but the original cell does not. The daughter cell lives, but the mother cell will die.

 

Edit: The halflife of DNA is ~521 years. RNA varies, but bacterial mRNA has a halflife of around 2 minutes.

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Let's see if I understand what you are saying...

 

Say we have a mini carpet anemone that's 15 years old, and we divide it in two by cutting it, and after they heal we divide those two resulting anemones into two (leaving us with 4 anemones). Would we expect these four anemones to have the same lifespan (everything else being equal)? In other words, would all of the anemones have a normal lifespan minus 15 years?

 

Now say we have a birdsnest colony that's been alive for 300 years, and we frag off some new growth. Would we expect the new frag to have the life expectancy of a sexually reproduced colony, or a reduced lifespan because it came from an older colony? I'm assuming that since it's new growth, it's life expectancy would be similar to a new colony.

 

I would also expect that as the original parts of the colony age, they will die sooner than new growth (building up the reef as older parts of the colony die, being covered/replaced by new growth). So even though the colony as a whole never dies of old age, its older portions do die and get covered by new growth that originated from that same colony.

 

Does this sound accurate?

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DNA has a life span. So does RNA. Polyps absolutely age and can die from old age. Nothing can live forever. A cell may divide and pass its genetic material on, and that being a clone, the cell technically "lives forever" but the original cell does not. The daughter cell lives, but the mother cell will die.

 

Edit: The halflife of DNA is ~521 years. RNA varies, but bacterial mRNA has a halflife of around 2 minutes.

 

So if one nem splits into 2 nems.. which is the older of the 2 (eg "mother") that should die first?

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