Isopora crateriformis

The stony coral

This species was scientifically described by Gardiner in 1898.

Acroporid corals are reef-builders. The animal is a colony of polyps sharing one calcium-carbonate skeleton, usually with photosynthetic algae in the tissue.

Stony corals secrete a hard calcium-carbonate skeleton. A named ‘species’ on a reef is a colony of polyps, often hosting zooxanthellae that need sunlit, relatively clear water.

Range and habitat

Isopora crateriformis is recorded from American Samoa, Australia, Indonesia, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Wallis and Futuna.

GBIF currently lists 334 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.

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

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.

Isopora crateriformis 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 Vietnamese Wikipedia article on Isopora crateriformis, translated and retold in English, plus Wikidata item Q20202043 and GBIF occurrence geography. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Confirm status and range on iucnredlist.org.