Endangered
Mussismilia harttii
Mussismilia harttii
Mussismilia harttii is a brain coral in the family Faviidae (order Scleractinia), recorded as Endangered and tied to Brazil, Costa Rica, and Dominican Republic.
The brain coral
Brain and maze corals in this group grow as mounds or plates with valleys of polyps. The pattern is the skeleton, not a paint job.
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
The species occurs in the Atlantic Ocean along the coasts of Brazil.
GBIF currently lists 956 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.
Mussismilia harttii 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 Dutch Wikipedia article on Mussismilia harttii, translated and retold in English, plus Wikidata item Q3939017 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.
