Heliopora hiberniana
| Heliopora hiberniana | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Heliopora hiberniana | ||||||||||||
| Richards , Yasuda , Kikuchi , Foster , Mitsuyuki , Stat , Suyama & Wilson , 2018 |
Heliopora hiberniana is a species of coral that is only known from a few coral reefs on the coast of islands off the coast of northwestern Australia. It was only described in early 2019 and is next to the long-known blue coral ( Heliopora coerulea ) the second recent species of the genus Heliopora and the family Helioporidae, a reef-forming group from the subclass of octo corals .
features
Heliopora hiberniana forms highly branched colonies that can reach a maximum diameter of 40 cm. As with the blue coral, the skeleton is made of crystalline aragonite . The main branches are shaped like short baseball bats that are no more than 30 cm long. The small branches with a diameter of less than 15 mm are round at the base and in most cases have rounded, somewhat flattened tips. On a surface of 5 mm² one counts 9 to 17 car pores ( coral goblets of the Helioporidae), which have a diameter of 0.58 to 0.69 mm. The auto pores are divided into 12 to 15 pseudo-septa.
Heliopora hiberniana differs from the blue coral in that it is more slender. Outside, the colonies are brown in color. In contrast to the blue coral, which has a blue-colored skeleton due to various iron salts, the skeleton of Heliopora hiberniana is white or whitish-blue. H. hiberniana differs from the extinct species Heliopora fijiensis in that it has finer branches and smaller autopores with fewer pseudosepta.
Way of life
Heliopora hiberniana occurs in the Ashmore Reef and in the Hibernia Reef and grows there closely together with green algae of the genus Halimeda at depths of one to twelve meters. In Ashmore Reef, she lives sympathetically with the blue coral. Between the branches lives Alpheus obesomanus , a kind of alpheidae . Commensal worms are absent. Compared to the coral bleaching seems Heliopora hiberniana to be quite resilient.
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d Zoe T. Richards, Nina Yasuda, Taisei Kikuchi, Taryn Foster, Chika Mitsuyuki, Michael Stat, Yoshihisa Suyama and Nerida G. Wilson. 2018. Integrated Evidence Reveals A New Species in the Ancient Blue Coral Genus Heliopora (Octocorallia). Scientific Reports. 8, 15875. DOI: 10.1038 / s41598-018-32969-z