Montipora capitata
Montipora capitata, commonly known as rice coral or pore coral, is a stony coral in the family Acroporidae. It is a reef building species and is found in tropical parts of the Pacific Ocean.

Dr. Dwayne Meadows, NOAA/NMFS/OPR · Public Domain · 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
- MontiporaPBDB
- 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 most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Montipora capitata on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
2 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Montipora capitata and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Montipora capitata and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
18 taxa- Echinodermata2 sites
- Gastropoda2 sites
- Halimeda2 sites
- Hydrolithon onkodes2 sites
- Montipora hispida2 sites
- Pocillopora verrucosa2 sites
- Porites compressa2 sites
- Amphistegina1 site
- Brachiopoda1 site
- Heterostegina1 site
- Homotrema1 site
- Marginopora1 site
- Montipora verrucosa1 site
- Peneroplis1 site
- Pocillopora eydouxi1 site
- Porites1 site
- Porites lobata1 site
- Porolithon1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Montipora capitata, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- Holocene reef accretion: southwest Molokai, Hawaii, USA1
- Holocene reef development where wave energy reduces accomodation space, Kailua Bay, windward Oahu, Hawaii, USA1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Montipora capitata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dr. Dwayne Meadows, NOAA/NMFS/OPR
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Montipora capitata was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itMontipora through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Dana 1846