Acropora hyacinthus
Acropora hyacinthus is a species of Acropora described from a specimen collected in Fiji by James Dwight Dana in 1846. It was thought to have a range that includes the Indian Ocean, the Indo-Pacific waters, southeast Asia, Japan, the East China Sea and the western Pacific Ocean, but has recently been shown to be restricted to the central pacific and the Australian east coast. It lives on shallow reefs on upper reef slopes, and is found from depths of 1–25 metres (3.3–82.0 ft). Crown-of-thorns starfish preferentially prey upon Acropora corals.

Holobionics · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- AcroporaPBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB, for Acroporidae
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB, for Acroporidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
74 occurrences of Acropora hyacinthus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
74 occurrences- Pleistocene78%
- Holocene22%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
5 formations
- Sobe Formation · Ryukyu Group5
- Naha Formation · Ryukyu Group2
- Wan Formation · Ryukyu Group1
- Aldabra Limestone Formation1
- Merizo Formation1
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The named rock units Acropora hyacinthus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 64 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Acropora hyacinthus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Acropora hyacinthus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
153 taxa- Porites12 sites
- Goniastrea stelligera8 sites
- Isopora palifera8 sites
- Pocillopora7 sites
- Acropora robusta6 sites
- Astrea curta6 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis6 sites
- Hydrolithon onkodes6 sites
- Leptoria phrygia6 sites
- Acropora cytherea5 sites
- Acropora humilis5 sites
- Pocillopora verrucosa5 sites
- Acropora abrotanoides4 sites
- Favia4 sites
- Lithophyllum4 sites
- Montipora4 sites
- Neogoniolithon4 sites
- Platygyra daedalea4 sites
- Porolithon4 sites
- Acanthastrea echinata3 sites
- Acropora digitifera3 sites
- Carpenteria3 sites
- Diploastrea heliopora3 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Acropora hyacinthus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
22 references- Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia29
- Variations in Pleistocene coral assemblages in space and time in southern and northern central Ryukyu Islands, Japan10
- Limited membership in Pleistocene reef coral assemblages from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea: constancy during global change8
- Holocene key coral species in the Northwest Pacific: indicators of reef formation and reef ecosystem responses to global climate change and anthropogenic stresses in the near future4
- Succession and diversity in the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Kenya Coast3
- Holocene coral reef development under windward and leeward locations at Ishigaki Island, Ryukyu Islands, Japan2
- Mass mortality following disturbance in Holocene coral reefs from Papua New Guinea2
- A 300000-yr coral reef record of sea level changes, Mururoa atoll (Tuamotu archipelago, French Polynesia)2
- Late glacial to post glacial sea levels in the western Indian Ocean1
- Interstadial coral reef terraces and relative sea-level changes during marine oxygen isotope stages 3-4, Kikai Island, central Ryukyus, Japan1
- Pleistocene reef development in the southwest Ryukyu Islands, Japan1
- Postglacial growth history of a French Polynesian barrier reef tract, Tahiti, central Pacific1
Each of the 74 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 10 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Acropora hyacinthus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Holobionics
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- thehydrous
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAcropora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Dana 1846)