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Orange cup coral
Tubastraea coccinea
Valid name (WoRMS, AphiaID 291251, checked 2026-10-31).
- English
- Orange cup coral
- Scientific
- Tubastraea coccinea
- Dhivehi
- No recorded Dhivehi name
- Group
- Hard corals
- Depth and habitat
- Reef-associated, recorded from 1 to 37 m
- IUCN status
- NE · Not EvaluatedNot Evaluated (NE)CITES Appendix II
Description
An orange cup coral: a sun coral that forms clusters of tubular cups with bright orange to yellow polyps. It has no symbiotic algae and opens mainly at night to catch plankton with its tentacles. It grows in caves, under overhangs and on shaded walls. Outside its native range it has become invasive in the Atlantic.
In the Maldives
Recorded from the Maldives: iNaturalist research-grade observations in the Maldives (n=12); literature records via OBIS (Hexacorallians of the World (Fautin 2013)).
Sources
- sealifebase.se /summary/Tubastraea-coccinea.html
- marinespecies.org /aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=291251
- commons.wikimedia.org /wiki/File:Coral_sol_(Tubastraea_coccinea),_Cabo_Pulmo,_Baja_Californi
Dhivehi name source: No species-level Dhivehi name found in Dhivehi Wikipedia, SeaLifeBase (country: Maldives) or MRS/MMRI invertebrate publications.