WoRMS taxon details
Pavona cactus (Forskal, 1775)
AphiaID: 207312
AphiaID: 207312
| Classification: Biota > Animalia (Kingdom) > Cnidaria (Phylum) > Anthozoa (Class) > Hexacorallia (Subclass) > Scleractinia (Order) > Agariciidae (Family) > Pavona (Genus) |
| Status | accepted | |||||||||||||
| Record status | Edited by Database Management Team | |||||||||||||
| Rank | Species | |||||||||||||
| Parent | Pavona Lamarck, 1801 | |||||||||||||
| Synonymised taxa |
Pavona cristata Ellis & Solander Pavona praetorta (Dana) Pavona venusta | |||||||||||||
| Sources |
basis of record: Veron, J.E.N. (1986). Corals of Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Angus & Robertson Publishers, London. [details] basis of record: Sheppard, C.R.C. (1987). Coral species of the Indian Ocean and adjacent seas: a synonymised compilation and some regional distribution patterns. Atoll Research Bulletin Nr 307 [details] basis of record: Fauré, G. (1977). Annotated checklist of the corals in the Mascarene Archipelago, Indian Ocean. Atoll Research Bulletin 203: 1-26 [details] additional source: S.D.Cairns, B.W. Hoeksema & J. van der Land, update Oct. 2007, as a contribution to UNESCO-IOC Register of Marine Organisms (look up in IMIS) [details] from synonym: Fautin, Daphne G. (2011). Hexacorallians of the World., available online at http://hercules.kgs.ku.edu/Hexacoral/Anemone2/ [details] [view taxon] | |||||||||||||
| Vernacular Names |
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| Environment | marine, | |||||||||||||
| Distribution | Aldabra (from synonym) [details] [view taxon] Chagos [details] Indo-West Pacific [details] Kenya [details] Madagascar [details] Mauritius [details] Mozambique [details] Red Sea [details] Reunion [details] Rodriguez (from synonym) [details] [view taxon] Seychelles [details] | |||||||||||||
| Host of |
Xarifia finitima Humes, 1985 (parasitic: ectoparasitic)
Xarifia finitima Humes, 1985 (parasitic: endoparasitic) Odontomolgus actinophorus (Humes & Frost, 1964) (parasitic: ectoparasitic) | |||||||||||||
| Links | To Barcode of Life (2 barcodes) To Encyclopedia of Life To GenBank (32 nucleotides; 6 proteins) To IUCN Red List To USNM Invertebrate Zoology Cnidaria Collection To ITIS | |||||||||||||
| Notes |
Biology: zooxanthellate [details] Description: Colonies are a mass of small, vertical and irregular leaves, each being no more than a few cm tall. Leaves are always thin, not more than 4-5 mm thick, and the basal parts of a high proportion of leaves are dead and sometimes actually detached from the jumble of older fronds of the colony. Septa are less than 1 mm diameter and lie flush with the surface of the leaf. They run in rows parallel to the edge of the leaf. Rows are separated by 3 or 4 mm. The species is mostly found in sheltered and lagoonal areas where it is usually very common. It tolerates sediment well, and reaches its greatest abundance and colony size between 3 - 10 m deep in calm areas. There, "supercolonies" are frequently encountered. These are growths of the same species from one or more original colonies, which have detached and spread over wide areas. Thus Pavona cactus may provide about 75% cover, for example, over 10 square metres or more (Sheppard, 1998). Colonies are thin, contorted, bifacial, upright fronds with or without thickened branching bases. Corallites are fine and shallow, and aligned in irregular rows parallel to the margins. Colour: pale brown or greenish-brown. Abundance: Abundant in some lagoons and on upper reef slopes, especially those of fringing reefs, and in turbid water protected from wave action, where colonies frequently exceed 10 m in diameter (Veron (1986)). Tropical Indo-Pacific in Kalk (1958). [details] Type locality: Type locality: Red Sea (Veron, 1986). [details] | |||||||||||||
| Image |
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| LSID | urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:207312 | |||||||||||||
| Taxonomic Edit history |
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[Taxonomic tree] [Distribution map] [Google] [Google scholar] [Google images] | ||||||||||||||
| Citation: WoRMS (2013). Pavona cactus (Forskal, 1775). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=207312 on 2013-05-20 | ||||||||||||||
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