No photo available
Black turret coral
Tubastraea micranthus
Valid name (WoRMS, AphiaID 291255, checked 2026-10-31).
- English
- Black turret coral
- Scientific
- Tubastraea micranthus
- Dhivehi
- No recorded Dhivehi name
- Group
- Hard corals
- Depth and habitat
- Reef-associated
- IUCN status
- NE · Not EvaluatedNot Evaluated (NE)CITES Appendix II
Description
A black sun coral: a tree-like coral with dark green to black branches and polyps, often more than 1 m tall, growing out from current-swept walls and channel edges. It has no symbiotic algae and feeds on plankton, opening its polyps into the current. In the Maldives it is a classic sight on channel dives, and it is the hard coral with the most iNaturalist records there.
In the Maldives
Recorded from the Maldives: museum specimens (n=3); iNaturalist research-grade observations in the Maldives (n=72).
Sources
- sealifebase.se /summary/Tubastraea-micranthus.html
- marinespecies.org /aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=291255
- commons.wikimedia.org /wiki/File:Coral_(Tubastraea_micranthus),_mar_Rojo,_Egipto,_2023-04-16
Dhivehi name source: No species-level Dhivehi name found in Dhivehi Wikipedia, SeaLifeBase (country: Maldives) or MRS/MMRI invertebrate publications.