TAXONOMY

KINGDOM Animalia

PHYLUM Cnidaria (possess cnidocytes)

CLASS Anthozoa (Sea Anemones and Corals)

SUBCLASS Hexacorallia (water-based organisms formed of colonial polyps generally with 6-fold symmetry)

ORDER Scleractinia (Stony Corals)

FAMILY Merulinidae

GENUS Hydnophora sp.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
Hexacoral or stonycorals with colonies that may be massive, encrusting, or branched; usually brown, greenish, or yellowish. Conical protuberances over the entire colony’s surface. Tentacles often partially extended during the day.

DISTRIBUTION/HABITAT
Widely distributed in the Indo- Pacific. Common in variety of reef habitats.

DIET IN THE WILD
Nutrition mostly provided by symbiotic zooxanthellae, but also take other food sources, such as plankton.

REPRODUCTION: The small polyp stony (SPS) corals are male and female and can reproduce both sexually and asexually. They reproduce sexually by releasing eggs and sperm at the same time (spawning), resulting in a fertilized egg which then forms into a free-swimming planula larva. Eventually the planula larvae settles onto the substrate, becoming plankters. This then forms a tiny polyp which begins to excrete calcium carbonate and develops into a coral. Planula larvae are extremely vulnerable to predation, and very few survive. Hydnophoras reproduce asexually from breakage due to storms resulting in fragmentation.

REMARKS: Hydnophora are very aggressive and can extend sweeper polyps and sting or basically eat other corals it touches.

LOCATION; Main Philippine Coral Reef Tank PR04

flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/cas_docents/4673421321/in/set-72157623778757037/

WORDPRESS SHORTLINK  http://wp.me/p1DZ4b-nP