Abstract:
The objectives are to describe coral community structure with emphasis on coral assemblages, species diversity and distribution of stony corals along the East coast of ThailandCommunity structure of hard corals was investigated form 21 reefs along the East coast of Thailand. Data were collected using 4 replicated of 1 x 10 m quadrats. A lot of 65 coral species belonging to 32 genera and 13 families were recorded. Favidae dominated this assemblange in term of species abundance with 21 species recorded. The Acroporidae coral was the next most abundance species with 13 species. Among 65 species, 16 species belonging to 14 genera and 16 families were found at all reefs.Canonical Discriminant Analysis indicated the difference in species composition study area. In term of area cover, 12 species were found at all reefs. Furthermore the numbers of colony of 7 species were different among the reefs. The reef slope had more species, number of colony and area cover than these at the reef flat. Porites lutea was the most dominant species in all study areas. However, in term of area cover, Porites lutea declined from the inner part to the outer part while the number of colony were not different. This result suggested the different population structure of Porities-lutea of this area.The community parameters considered in both area cover and number of colony had shown that there were some significant difference among test factors. The population structure colony size of Porites lutea and Pavona decussata, were most abundance in the rang 11-50 cm.