生物礁是由原地固着生物的沉积作用形成、横向分布限制并具有正向隆起的碳酸盐建造，是海洋中重要的生态系统。晚泥盆世弗拉期与法门期之交（F-F）和法门末期（Hangenberg）生物灭绝事件分别导致了层孔虫-珊瑚礁生态系统的崩溃和消失，之后的密西西比亚纪被普遍认为以微生物礁为主，后生动物礁罕见。本项目将对华南黔桂地区密西西比亚纪珊瑚礁的造礁和附礁生物进行系统古生物学研究，揭示礁体的生物组成和分布特征；对珊瑚礁的岩石和微相类型、沉积结构和生物埋藏特征进行研究，恢复礁体的沉积环境；进而探讨礁体的群落演替、形成和消失过程及其与沉积环境变化的关系等古生态信息。根据珊瑚礁及其上下地层中的有孔虫化石确定礁体的时代，探讨华南与全球其它地区同时期珊瑚礁的生物组成、埋藏特征、沉积环境、形成和消失过程等古生态特征的异同性，为泥盆纪末期层孔虫-珊瑚礁消失之后，密西西比亚纪后生动物礁的组成、复苏演化过程等提供新认识。

Reefs are defined as essentially in place carbonate deposits created by sessile organisms, with lateral confinement and topographic relief. They are important ecosystems in the marine environments. Stromatoporoid-coral reef ecosystems collapsed and disappeared respectively during the Late Devonian Frasnian-Famennian (F-F) and the latest Famennian (Hangenberg) mass extinction events. Afterwards, the Mississippian was widely believed as a period dominated by microbial reefs, with rare metazoan reefs. In this project, systematic palaeontologic studies will be carried out on the reef builders and dwellers in the Mississippian coral reefs from the Guizhou and Guangxi regions in South China, which will uncover the biotic composition and its distribution characteristics in the reefs. Based on the researches on the lithologic and microfacies types, sedimentary structures and biotic taphonomic characteristics of the coral reefs, their sedimentary environments will be reconstructed. Furthermore, the palaeoecology of the coral reefs will be discussed, such as the relationships among the reef community successions, growth and demise processes and sedimentary environment variations. The age of the coral reefs will be constrained by the foraminiferal fossils from the reefs and their underlying and overlying strata, which is the basis for the comparison of the coeval coral reefs between South China and the other global areas in their palaeoecological characteristics including biotic composition, taphonomic characteristic, sedimentary environment, and growth and demise process. These results will provide new insights into the composition, recovery and evolutionary process of the Mississippian metazoan reefs in the aftermath of the disappearance of end-Devonian stromatoporoid-coral reefs.