Porites lutea
Porites lutea is a species of stony coral in the family Poritidae. It is found growing in very shallow water on reefs in the Indo-Pacific region. It sometimes forms "microatolls" in the intertidal zone and these massive structures have been used to study trends in sea levels and sea water temperature.

Philippe Bourjon · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- PoritesPBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB, for Poritidae
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB, for Poritidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Poritidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Poritidae
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
50 occurrences of Porites lutea 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
50 occurrences- Miocene8%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene65%
- Holocene20%
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
3 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Porites lutea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 47 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Porites lutea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Porites lutea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
293 taxa- Platygyra daedalea7 sites
- Pocillopora verrucosa7 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis6 sites
- Acropora abrotanoides5 sites
- Dipsastraea laxa5 sites
- Dipsastraea pallida5 sites
- Echinopora gemmacea5 sites
- Goniastrea pectinata5 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis5 sites
- Goniastrea stelligera5 sites
- Cyphastrea microphthalma4 sites
- Echinophyllia aspera4 sites
- Favites flexuosa4 sites
- Montipora4 sites
- Pocillopora damicornis4 sites
- Porites lobata4 sites
- Stylophora pistillata4 sites
- Acanthastrea echinata3 sites
- Acropora digitifera3 sites
- Acropora humilis3 sites
- Acropora robusta3 sites
- Diploastrea heliopora3 sites
- Dipsastraea favus3 sites
- Favia3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Porites lutea, 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
27 references- Coral variation in two deep drill cores: significance for the Pleistocene development of the Great Barrier Reef7
- Facies, Fossil Record, and Age of Pleistocene Reefs from the Red Sea (Saudi Arabia)6
- Biofacies and diagenetic alterations of the Pleistocene coral reefs, northwest Red Sea coast, Saudi Arabia3
- Response of reef coral communities to sea-level rise: a Holocene model from Mauritius (western Indian Ocean)3
- Les Madreporaires fossiles de Mare [The fossil corals from Mare]3
- Report on Pleistocene and Pliocene corals from Ceram3
- Field work Sinai2
- Contributions to the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Red Sea coast, Egypt2
- Past corals and recent reefs in Indonesia2
- Late Quaternary uplift history from emerged reef terraces on Santo and Malekula Islands, central New Hebrides island arc2
- Revisiting the Quaternary development history of the western New Caledonian shelf system: from ramp to barrier reef1
- Evolutionary dynamics of Indo-Pacific reef corals throughout the Neogene1
Each of the 50 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. 15 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 Porites lutea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Philippe Bourjon
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itPorites through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Milne-Edwards and Haime 1851