Editing Houtman Abrolhos (section)

===Coral===
[[File:Houtman Abrolhos coral (Saville-Kent).jpg|thumb|[[William Saville-Kent]] painted these corals while visiting the Houtman Abrolhos in 1894. He referred to them as ''[[Madrepora]]'', but that name was then applied to virtually any hard coral, and the genus as now circumscribed does not occur in the Abrolhos.]]

The Houtman Abrolhos is unusual in having a luxuriant and diverse living coral reef at such a high latitude. 194 species in 50 genera have been recorded there,<ref name="Veron 1988">{{cite journal |author1=Veron, J. E. N.  |author2=Marsh, L. M. | year = 1988 | title = Hermatypic corals of Western Australia: records and annotated species list | journal = Records of the Western Australian Museum | volume = Supplement 29 | pages = 1–136}}</ref> all but two of which are tropical. This is a surprisingly high coral diversity, considering the high latitude of the reef, and the relatively low diversity of other biota.<ref name="Veron 1988"/> For a full list, see [[list of corals of the Houtman Abrolhos]].

The coral reef community at the Houtman Abrolhos is unusual in having tropical coral growing alongside and in direct competition with, temperate [[seaweed]]. As a result of this competition for light, space and nutrients, coral at the Houtman Abrolhos tends to grow more slowly and die younger than is usual. Reef production is to a large extent due to the production of carbon by [[coralline algae]] rather than by coral.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Chrisholm|first=John R.M.|date=2003|title=Primary Productivity of Reef-Building Crutose Coralline Algae|url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/376a/d9431a329b7eb1a51e91c57d859775153c37.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180330080234/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/376a/d9431a329b7eb1a51e91c57d859775153c37.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=2018-03-30|journal=Limnol. Oceanogr.|volume=48|issue=4 |pages=1376–1387|doi=10.4319/lo.2003.48.4.1376 |s2cid=18706826}}</ref>