Endangered
Acropora anthocercis
Acropora anthocercis
Acropora anthocercis is a staghorn coral in the family Acroporidae (order Scleractinia), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
It occurs in a variety of colours. Mainly purple, blue, mauve, and grey.
Introduction Acropora anthocercis is a acroporid coral that was first described by G.
Range and habitat
Acropora anthocercis can be found over a large range. The Red Sea, the Indo-Pacific, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, the East China Sea, the western Pacific Ocean in marine environments, South Africa, and Mozambique. It can be found at depths of 2 to 12 m (6.6 to 39.4 ft), and at temperatures between 25.61 and 26.56 °C (78.10 and 79.81 °F). Found on the top slopes of reefs, it is often in contact with strong waves.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
By day the polyps sit in sunlit water and feed the algae in their tissue; at night they can catch plankton. A colony does not walk. It lives or dies on that patch of reef.
A stony-coral colony is fixed. Growth, bleaching, and death happen in place. Collection and gear damage remove the skeleton as well as the tissue.
In crisis
The species is rated as endangered on the IUCN Red List, with a decreasing population covering a large range, but is abundant in some areas such as Queensland.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Branching acroporids are among the first corals to bleach in a marine heatwave and among the first to smash in a storm or under an anchor.
Acropora anthocercis is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Acropora anthocercis, Wikidata item Q3944257. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
