Summary

Montipora digitata is a branching coral that can come in a variety of colours. It is commonly found in shallow reef environments in the Indo-Pacific including Heron Island, Queensland. M. digitata has an obligate endosymbiotic relationship with zooxanthallae. M. digitata gains its nutrients and energy via a carnivorous diet and from zooxanthallae waste products. It can reproduce asexually through fragmentation and sexually through spawning. M. digitata is part of the order scleractinia, known as the stony corals or reef building corals.  Scleractinians were thought to have evolved 240 to 288 million years ago. M. digitata is native to Australia. This species is considered as least concern by the IUCN Red list, however it is still exposed to many threats including habitat degradation, bleaching, fresh water runoff, pollution and sedimentation.
The distribution and abundance of M. digitata on Heron Island has not been looked at before. Therefore, we conducted a small project to determine these factors. The project results can be viewed under the Ecology link.