Acroporidae is a family of small polyped

stony corals Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton. The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mo ...

in the phylum Cnidaria. The name is derived from the Greek ''"akron"'' meaning "summit" and refers to the presence of a

corallite A corallite is the skeletal cup, formed by an individual stony coral polyp, in which the polyp sits and into which it can retract. The cup is composed of aragonite, a crystalline form of calcium carbonate, and is secreted by the polyp. Corallit ...

at the tip of each branch of coral.Classification of Scleractinian (Stony) Corals
/ref> They are commonly known as staghorn corals and are grown in aquaria by reef hobbyists.Quintessential Small Polyped Stony Corals, the Staghorns, Family Acroporidae
/ref>

Description

Staghorn corals are the dominant group of reef builders. They come in many shapes and sizes and can be highly variable in colour and form, even within the same species. Most are either a branching variant or a wall/ table top variant shaped and some are encrusting. Encrusting means they grow over rock structure. the Their colours vary between browns, whites, pinks, blues, yellows, greens and purple, depending not only on species but also on the growing conditions. Identification is difficult and requires close examination of the corallites and a biochemical and genetic analysis. There is a corallite at the tip of each branch and, with the exception of '' Astreopora'', these are small with up to twelve septa in two cycles.

Distribution

''Anacropora'', ''Astreopora'' and ''Montipora'' are found in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. ''Acropora'' is cosmopolitan and is both common and conspicuous, usually being dominant in Indo-Pacific reefs. ''Enigmopora'' is represented by a single new species, '' Enigmopora darveliensis'', found in Malaysia and the Philippines.

Biology

Staghorn corals are

hermaphrodite In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite () is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes. Many Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrate ...

s. They are mostly broadcast-spawners and some species have been involved in annual synchronous mass-spawning events on the Great Barrier Reef and in Japanese and Indonesian waters. Some species undergo

fragmentation Fragmentation or fragmented may refer to: Computers * Fragmentation (computing), a phenomenon of computer storage * File system fragmentation, the tendency of a file system to lay out the contents of files non-continuously * Fragmented distributi ...

, a form of

asexual reproduction Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that does not involve the fusion of gametes or change in the number of chromosomes. The offspring that arise by asexual reproduction from either unicellular or multicellular organisms inherit the fu ...

, and this sometimes results in reefs composed of a single species.

References

{{Authority control Scleractinia Cnidarian families Taxa named by Addison Emery Verrill