Coral Clones and Genetic degradation?

[BlueAbyss]

Yes, fragging is very similar to vegetative cloning (taking a cutting from a plant). Dolly was a genetic clone, created by taking the nucleus out of a fertilized egg and replacing it with the nucleus from another animal.

What you call an apple pear is actually an Asian pear. Still a pear but a different variety.

You can slice 2 hyacinth bulbs in half, carefully placing the two halves together and wrapping them in an elastic band. Plant the bulb and one half of the flowers will be one color, the other half another color. This is similar to grafting (we've all seen the chlorophyl-free orange, yellow, or red cacti grafted onto a green stock, the green part provides food for the non-photosynthetic part if the graft takes). This can be done with frags of monti caps, you can attach different colored frags together and they will grow together and fuse as they grow.

It's entirely possible that a coral could adapt ('be altered from the original colony') by changing the types of algaes that it contains, but this has nothing to do with the genetics of the coral since the coral and the algae are symbiotic and the coral can just expel the symbiotic algae if it wants. It's likely that corals do this anyhow and that's one of the reasons color changes happen in different tanks (and under different lighting).

As far as slicing polyps in half and attempting to join them, I doubt it would work. Sort of like organ transplants, I would assume... may work for a while, with immunity depressing drugs, but eventually one will destroy the other.