الفهرس 
general introductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
In Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, this will be the first study to phylogenetic analysis to hard coral species. The closest faunistic proximity in Indo- Pacific region is the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea (Sheppard and Sheppard 1991, Wallace 1999, Veron 2000). In the present study, morphological identification and molecular tools were used to identify and investigate coral species between selected sites. In morphological examination, 180 samples had been identified to species level. Eight species had been recorded (Acropora pharaonis, Acropora humilis, Acropora digitefra, Pocillopora verrucosa, Stylophora pistillata, Porites harrisoni, Platygyra daedalea, Favia pallida) belong to 6 genera. from our finding, there are minor differences in the morphological characteristics, however, the need for a more accurate technique of coral species identification is urgently needed to resolve some taxonomic problems with coral ID. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been made for the corallite and branch measurement with sites, some measurements has highly influenced by sites, but others have no influenced.
DNA barcoding technique has been used to identify samples and to build molecular phylogenetic analysis. For DNA extraction, 94samples had been succeeded. For PCR, samples had been chosen according to DNA concentration and purity, and only 34 samples had been chosen. DNA barcoding was succeeded only for 12 samples from 5 species. All COXI edited sequences of the current study were deposited at NCBI GenBank with accession numbers from KR401093to KR401104. The phylogenetic analysis shows that Porites harrisoni, is collected in one clade away from other Porites sp. While for Acropora digitefra samples which clustered with other Acropora sp. but it shows that it is cryptic species. Favia pallida is grouped with other Favia pallida from Japan. However, samples from Fanous (Red Sea) show morphotypes. Platygyra daeleda sample from Fanous (Red Sea) also shows it is cryptic species as it has genetic distance from other Platygyra daeleda samples. Pocillopora verrucosa samples show it is cryptic species from other Pocillopora verrucosa.
Eighty-four transects were surveyed from all of the studied sites to analysis coral diversity and abundance. Red Sea shows the highest biotic cover percentage (76.67%), while Arabian Gulf shows (53%) non- biotic cover percentage. Red Sea shows the highest coraldiversity (14 species) compared with the Arabian Gulf shows only 4 species form. The highest bleached colonies had been observed in Abu Dhabi breakwater (0-5m and 5-10m) 12 colonies. Percentage cover was found to be highly influenced significantly by species (p<0.05), interaction between sites and species (p<0.05), interaction between species and depths (p<0.05) and interaction among sites, species and depths (p<0.05). However, it was found non-significant with site (p>0.05), depth (p>0.05), interaction between sites and depths (p>0.05).