Brown staghorn coral
Acropora muricata
Valid name (WoRMS, AphiaID 207007, checked 2026-10-31).
- English
- Brown staghorn coral
- Scientific
- Acropora muricata
- Dhivehi
- No recorded Dhivehi name
- Group
- Hard corals
- IUCN status
- NE · Not EvaluatedNot Evaluated (NE)CITES Appendix II
Description
A staghorn coral that forms large, branching thickets with long, cylindrical branches, often over wide areas of lagoon and sheltered reef slope. Colonies are usually brown, cream or blue-tinged, with paler growing tips. The thickets are important shelter for small reef fish. It was formerly known as Acropora formosa.
In the Maldives
Recorded from the Maldives: museum specimens (n=18, QM); iNaturalist research-grade observations in the Maldives (n=7); literature records via OBIS (Hexacorallians of the World (Fautin 2013), IndOBIS); 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
- marinespecies.org /aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=207007
- commons.wikimedia.org /wiki/File:Acropora_muricata_Maldives.jpg
Dhivehi name source: No species-level Dhivehi name found in Dhivehi Wikipedia, SeaLifeBase (country: Maldives) or MRS/MMRI invertebrate publications.