Table 1.

Significance levels among Third-order Partial Correlation Coefficients (PCC) for the five supra-modular variables (below the diagonal) and Bivariate (zero-order) correlation coefficients (above the diagonal). Complete name of variables: Polyp Aperture, Inter Polyp Distance, Thickness, Internode length an Branch lenght (see Fig. 3 for variable distributions and colony location)

	Aperture	Distance	Thick	Internode	Branch
Aperture	-		0.457*	0.75***	0.789***
Distance	n.s.	-	n.s.	n.s.	n.s.
Thickness	-0.171*	n.s.	-	0.556**	0.659***
Internode	n.s.	n.s.	n.s.	-	0.791***
Branch	0.482**	n.s.	0.442*	0.383*	-

n.s. non significant

* P < 0.05

**P < 0.01

*** P < 0.001