Mikhail Matz

In the US people [mostly] say acrOpora, in Australia - acropOra. I prefer the latter, it splits the original latin parts more logically: "acro" - top, "pora" - holed

Haha, I have 10 tanks 10 gallons each. Our philosophy of coral keeping is quite different from typical hobbyist: the more it is like a simple bucket, the better, and there should be many small separate ones rather than one big one. Tanks are entirely independent, water quality is maintained by regular changes (we go through Instant Ocean pretty fast). Advantage - there is practically nothing in this that can break or get out of control, and we have independent replicates for good statistics. Disadvantage - it does not look too pretty. Corals can live there for years (we hand-feed them Coral Frenzy, too). Yes, we collaborated with Rowan Martindale! She is a paleontologist, though, her interest is mostly old dead coral. Which is quite opposite from mine, as an evolutionary biologist - Im interested in where and how the future coral will be. Rachel Wright was a brilliant student, yes! At Harvard now.

Hi folks - my joining this group is long overdue! But better late than never. I am a professor at UT Austin (Department of Integrative Biology) studying genomics of coral adaptation. More info (and links to papers) here: http://matzlab.weebly.com/ Please feel free to contact me if you have difficult questions about coral biology, and especially if you observe something unusual about your corals. cheers Misha Matz