Acropora millepora
Acropora millepora is a species of branching stony coral native to the western Indo-Pacific where it is found in shallow water from the east coast of Africa to the coasts of Japan and Australia. It was first described in 1834 by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg as Heteropora millepora.

MDC Seamarc Maldives · 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 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 20.45 Mya to 11.7 ka.
10 occurrences of Acropora millepora 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
10 occurrences- Miocene10%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene80%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Acropora millepora has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Acropora millepora and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Acropora millepora and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
38 taxa- Acropora aspera1 site
- Acropora longicyathus1 site
- Acropora microphthalma1 site
- Acropora muricata1 site
- Acropora robusta1 site
- Acropora valida1 site
- Astreopora1 site
- Coelastrea aspera1 site
- Cyphastrea serailia1 site
- Dipsastraea pallida1 site
- Favia1 site
- Favites halicora1 site
- Fungia fungites1 site
- Galaxea fascicularis1 site
- Goniastrea australensis1 site
- Goniopora1 site
- Heliofungia actiniformis1 site
- Herpolitha limax1 site
- Hydnophora exesa1 site
- Isopora cuneata1 site
- Leptastrea purpurea1 site
- Lobophyllia corymbosa1 site
- Lobophyllia hemprichii1 site
- Millepora1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Acropora millepora, 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
4 references- Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia7
- Evolutionary dynamics of Indo-Pacific reef corals throughout the Neogene1
- Wallace, 19991
- Evidence of high sea level during isotope stage 5c in Queensland, Australia1
Each of the 10 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. 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 content1
Picture of Acropora millepora
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- MDC Seamarc Maldives
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Acropora millepora was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
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. (Ehrenberg 1834)