Size: upto 30 cm.

 

Key Features: Usually brown, sometimes with green or grey oral discs. Colonies are massive with slightly angular corallites. Corallites have thick, rounded walls. Paliform lobes are weakly developed. Columellae are large. Septal spines may be prominent. Costae commonly form a three pointed star where three corallites adjoin.

 

Diet: Plankton, Zooxanthellae / Light

 

Habitat: This species occurs in most reef environments. This species is found on subtidal rock and rocky reefs, in the outer reef channel, on the back and foreslope, and in lagoons. It can be found on inter-reef rubble substrate. This species is found to 30 m.

 

Conservation status: Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

 

 

 

 

 

References:

IUCN Red List. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/132979/0

 

Favites complanata. In Australian Institute of Marine Science. Retrieved on June 18, 2014 from http://coral.aims.gov.au/factsheet.jsp?speciesCode=0163

 

Favites complanata. In Reeflex , the Marine Aquarium Encyclopedia. Retrieved on June 18, 2014 from http://www.reeflex.net/tiere/1756_Favites_complanata.htm

 

Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) Project, Second Interim Progress Report, GEER Foundation, June 2012

 

 

Photo Courtesy

Charlie Veron. Australian Institute of Marine  Science. Licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 via Creative Commons