Acroporidae
Acroporidae is a family of small polyped stony corals in the phylum Cnidaria. The name is derived from the Greek "akron" meaning "summit" and refers to the presence of a corallite at the tip of each branch of coral. They are commonly known as staghorn corals and are grown in aquaria by reef hobbyists.

Nhobgood · 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
- AstrocoeniinaPBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At least 174 million years on record.
The record covers at least 174.7 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 180.4 Mya to 0 Mya.
2,674 occurrences of Acroporidae 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
2,674 occurrences- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassic2%
- Early Cretaceous1%
- Late Cretaceousunder 1%
- Paleocene1%
- Eocene6%
- Oligocene10%
- Miocene13%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene49%
- Holocene10%
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
203 formations
- Hato Formation70
- Seroe Domi Formation54
- Salcedo Formation46
- San Luis Formation37
- Ironshore Formation29
- Sobe Formation · Ryukyu Group27
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The named rock units Acroporidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 179 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 1,710 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Acroporidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Acroporidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
2,383 taxa- Porites69 sites
- Acropora54 sites
- Acropora cervicornis36 sites
- Montipora33 sites
- Favia31 sites
- Astreopora28 sites
- Goniopora25 sites
- Stylophora25 sites
- Stylophora granulata24 sites
- Montastraea23 sites
- Acropora palmata22 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis22 sites
- Pavona21 sites
- Porites baracoaensis21 sites
- Pseudodiploria strigosa21 sites
- Antiguastrea20 sites
- Alveopora19 sites
- Solenastrea bournoni19 sites
- Stylophora affinis19 sites
- Actinacis rollei18 sites
- Porites astreoides17 sites
- Pseudodiploria clivosa16 sites
- Favites15 sites
- Goniastrea15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 603 sites for Acroporidae, and this reads 240 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
412 references- Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia211
- Ecological persistence interrupted in Caribbean coral reefs120
- Miocene reef-coral diversity of Indonesia: unlocking the murky origins of the Coral Triangle103
- Variations in Pleistocene coral assemblages in space and time in southern and northern central Ryukyu Islands, Japan73
- Limited membership in Pleistocene reef coral assemblages from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea: constancy during global change67
- Community structure of Pleistocene coral reefs of Curacao, Netherlands Antilles65
- Systematische und paläoökologische Untersuchungen an oligozänen Korallen der Umgebung von San Luca (Provinz Vicenza, Norditalien) [Systematic and paleoecologic studies of Oligocene corals from San Luca area (Vicenza, northern Italy)]48
- Pliocene to Pleistocene reef coral assemblages in the Limon Group of Costa Rica46
- Neogene reef coral assemblages of the Bocas del Toro region, Panama: the rise of Acropora palmata41
- Broad-scale patterns in Pleistocene coral reef communities from the Caribbean: implications for ecology and management39
- Succession and diversity in the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Kenya Coast37
- Origination preceding extinction during late Cenozoic turnover of Caribbean reefs36
Each of the 2,674 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. 400 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 content1
Picture of Acroporidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nhobgood
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Acroporidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Acroporidae”
- 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 itAstrocoeniina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Verrill 1902