Pachyseris speciosa

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Pachyseris speciosa
Pachyseris speciosa with the three-fin slime fish Helcogramma striata

Pachyseris speciosa with the three-fin slime fish Helcogramma striata

Systematics
Class : Flower animals (anthozoa)
Subclass : Hexacorallia
Order : Hard corals (Scleractinia)
Family : Euphylliidae?
Genre : Pachyseris
Type : Pachyseris speciosa
Scientific name
Pachyseris speciosa
( Dana , 1846)

Pachyseris speciosa is a hard coral that is distributed from the Red Sea to French Polynesia . It grows on steep walls and reef slopes.

features

It forms strong funnel-shaped or plate-shaped, leaf-like or an elephant-ear-like sticks that can reach a maximum diameter of two meters. The individual plates of larger colonies can overlap. They are brown, green, or gray-beige in color. The coral colony is characterized by a laminar, concentric groove structure, which in some cases can also become irregular. Polyps are only found on the top of the coral. The living tissue dies on the smooth underside, which is not completely attached to the subsurface, and it is colonized by foraminifera , sponges , bryophytes or sea ​​squirts . Expanded polyps have not been observed to date.

Systematics

In the traditional hard coral system, Pachyseris speciosa is part of the Agariciidae family . According to a new phylogenetic study, however, it is close to the Euphylliidae family as a basal taxon .

literature

  • Harry Erhardt, Horst Moosleitner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas. Volume 2, Mergus-Verlag, Melle 1997, ISBN 3-88244-112-7 .
  • Harry Erhardt, Hans A. Baensch : Mergus sea water atlas. Volume 5, Mergus-Verlag, Melle 2000, ISBN 3-88244-115-1 .
  • Helmut Schuhmacher, Johann Hinterkircher: Lower marine animals. BLV, Munich / Vienna / Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-405-14854-5 .
  • H. Fukami, CA Chen, AF Budd, A. Collins, C. Wallace et al .: Mitochondrial and Nuclear Genes Suggest that Stony Corals Are Monophyletic but Most Families of Stony Corals Are Not (Order Scleractinia, Class Anthozoa, Phylum Cnidaria). In: PLoS ONE. 3 (9), 2008, p. E3222. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0003222

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