Great Star Coral

Fascinating facts about the Great Star Coral

• Great star coral is the sole representative of its family, Montastraeidae, meaning the entire family consists of a single genus. This genus, Montastraea, contains only one species, Montastraea cavernosa, which is commonly called great star coral. The coral is native to the Caribbean seas, where it builds the colonies that define the family's unique identity.
• Colonies of great star coral can develop into massive boulders and domes that exceed 5 feet (1.5 m) across in shallow and moderate depths. When the water is deeper, the same species often adopts a plate-like growth form instead of a mound. It inhabits most reef environments and dominates the coral community at depths of 12.2-30.5 m, showing its adaptability across a wide depth range.
• Each polyp of great star coral is roughly the size of a human thumb, a noticeable feature when the colony is observed up close. These polyps remain retracted during daylight but fully extend their tentacles at night, giving the surface a shimmering, pulsating appearance. The nightly expansion allows the coral to feed and exchange gases when the surrounding water is calmer and less illuminated.
• Great star coral not only hosts the usual symbiotic zooxanthellae but also contains endocellular cyanobacteria within its tissues. Researchers have suggested that these cyanobacteria may assist the coral in fixing atmospheric nitrogen, providing an additional nutrient source. This dual symbiosis is unusual among Caribbean corals and may help the colony thrive in nutrient-poor reef waters.
• Great star coral colonies are gonochoric, meaning each colony is either male or female, and they synchronise spawning to occur one week after the full moon in late August. After spawning, the skeletal structure of the colonies shows a clear sex-related pattern: females develop a less dense skeleton than males. The reduced density is thought to result from females reallocating energy toward egg production.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Great Star Coral

Great star coral is one of the most resilient and wide-ranging corals in the Caribbean. Its large, dome-shaped boulders are a fixture of reefs from the shallows to the deep mesophotic zone, a twilight realm between 30 and 150 metres where sunlight barely reaches. This extraordinary depth range makes it one of the few corals that can survive in deep-reef refugia when shallow reefs bleach and die.

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