Corals are important organisms in the marine environment, as they are responsible for the building of coral reefs. Coralsbelong to the phyla Cnidaria like anemones, jellyfishes and gorgonians. Coralsthat are reef builders, which have stony bones, are from the sub classHexacorallia, in the order Scleractinia. The targeted species of this websiteis a hard coral called Honeycomb coral or Brain coral and belongs to genus
Favia in the family Faviidae. The genuswas identified by general external characteristics, as corals can be reallytricky to identify to species level. Most identification guides need to look atthe number and shape of septa from the corallites, or skeletal cup. But inorder to this the coral needs to be killed and this was not the intentionbecause this was a single colony in the Advanced Aquarium Facilities and it hasbeen there for a long time already. It looks like it could be a
Favia speciosa, but as it cannot be confirmed it will be treated only as
Favia sp.
Picture of
Favia speciosa from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Charlie Veron. <Accessed from: http://coral.aims.gov.au/factsheet.jsp?speciesCode=0158>