Madrepora (Spanish, "mother of pores") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of stony

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...

s, often found forming

reefs A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes—deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock out ...

or islands in tropical locations. The names Madrepore and Madreporaria were formerly applied universally to any stony coral of the family

Scleractinia 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 ...

. They reproduce in three separate ways, as discovered by the marine zoologist Anne Thynne (1800–1866). It is commonly known as horn coral. A colony is branched with small polyps in cylindrical cups separated by a perforated coenosteum. Terminal polyps bear six tentacles, while lateral polyps bear twelve tentacles. Madrepora is economically important, since it contributes to the formation of coral reefs.

Species

Species include: * '' Madrepora arbuscula'' (Moseley, 1881) * '' Madrepora astroites'' Forskål, 1775 * '' Madrepora carolina'' (Pourtalès, 1871) * '' Madrepora minutiseptum'' Cairns & Zibrowius, 1997 * '' Madrepora oculata''

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

, 1758 * '' Madrepora porcellana'' (Moseley, 1881) * †'' Madrepora trochiformis'' Pallas, 1766

References

Coral reefs Oculinidae Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Scleractinia genera {{scleractinia-stub