Critically Endangered
Ten-ray Star Coral
Madracis decactis
Ten-ray Star Coral is a stony coral in the family Pocilloporidae (order Scleractinia) — Madracis decactis, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and United States.
The stony coral
It was first described by Lyman in 1859.
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.
Anthozoans are corals and anemones: sessile polyps, often colonial, without a medusa stage. The photograph is the living colony.
Range and habitat
Ten-ray Star Coral is recorded from U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, United States, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico.
GBIF currently lists 14,125 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.
Habits
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.
The colony stays where it settled. Water quality, light, and a stable bottom decide whether tissue remains on the skeleton.
In crisis
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Warm-water bleaching, sedimentation, destructive fishing, and the curio trade sit behind many stony-coral badges. That is the group backdrop — confirm the official criteria for this name on the Red List.
Ten-ray Star Coral is Critically 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 Cebuano Wikipedia article on Madracis decactis, translated and retold in English, plus Wikidata item Q3950645 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.
