Acropora coral (no English common name)
Acropora gemmifera
Valid name (WoRMS, AphiaID 207097, checked 2026-10-31).
- English
- Acropora coral (no English common name)
- Scientific
- Acropora gemmifera
- Dhivehi
- No recorded Dhivehi name
- Group
- Hard corals
- Depth and habitat
- Reef-associated, recorded from 0 to 50 m
- IUCN status
- EN · EndangeredEndangered (EN), assessed 2023CITES Appendix II
Description
A thick, finger-like Acropora with short, stout branches that taper towards the tip, rising from a firm base. The side cups are arranged in neat rows that get smaller towards the branch tip, which helps to identify it at close range. Colonies are often brown, cream, green or purple with paler tips and grow on reef flats and wave-exposed upper slopes. It is one of the Acropora most often photographed in the Maldives.
In the Maldives
Recorded from the Maldives: museum specimens (n=8, QM); iNaturalist research-grade observations in the Maldives (n=30); literature records via OBIS (Hexacorallians of the World (Fautin 2013)); SeaLifeBase Maldives checklist. Branching and table corals of this kind were among the worst hit by the 1998 and 2016 mass bleaching events in the Maldives.
Sources
- sealifebase.se /summary/Acropora-gemmifera.html
- marinespecies.org /aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=207097
- commons.wikimedia.org /wiki/File:Acropora_gemmifera_Maldives.JPG
Dhivehi name source: No species-level Dhivehi name found in Dhivehi Wikipedia, SeaLifeBase (country: Maldives) or MRS/MMRI invertebrate publications.