Endangered
Acropora echinata
Acropora echinata
Acropora echinata is a staghorn coral in the family Acroporidae (order Scleractinia), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The tips of these branchlets are blue or purple, and the species is generally white or cream, but can be completely blue.
Introduction Acropora echinata is a acroporid coral that was first described by James Dwight Dana in 1846.
Range and habitat
Acropora echinata is uncommon but occurs over a large range. Palau, central Pacific, Southeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific, Australia, the Indian Ocean, the East China Sea, and Japan. It has been found in five of the six regions of Indonesia, and was seen at 17 locations in the Marshall Islands. The decline of coral reefs, coral disease, fishing, climate change, acidification of oceans, pollution, and being prey to Acanthaster planci also affect the species.
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 listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, and has a decreasing population.
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 echinata 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 echinata, Wikidata item Q3945051. 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.
