Isopora palifera
Isopora palifera is a species of stony coral in the family Acroporidae. It is a reef building coral living in shallow water and adopts different forms depending on the water conditions where it is situated. It is found in the Western Indo-Pacific Ocean as far east as Australia.

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
- IsoporaPBDB
- 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 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
101 occurrences of Isopora palifera 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
101 occurrences- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene77%
- Holocene21%
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
7 formations
- Sobe Formation · Ryukyu Group6
- Aldabra Limestone Formation5
- Naha Formation · Ryukyu Group5
- Era Beds Formation1
- Hateruma Formation · Ryukyu Group1
- Miyako-jima Formation · Ryukyu Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Isopora palifera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 81 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Isopora palifera and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Isopora palifera and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
197 taxa- Porites18 sites
- Pocillopora12 sites
- Acropora10 sites
- Acropora hyacinthus8 sites
- Platygyra8 sites
- Favia7 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis7 sites
- Goniastrea6 sites
- Cyphastrea5 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis5 sites
- Goniastrea stelligera5 sites
- Platygyra pini5 sites
- Acropora muricata4 sites
- Diploastrea heliopora4 sites
- Dipsastraea pallida4 sites
- Leptoria phrygia4 sites
- Montipora4 sites
- Platygyra daedalea4 sites
- Acanthastrea echinata3 sites
- Acropora humilis3 sites
- Astrea curta3 sites
- Corallinaceae3 sites
- Cyphastrea serailia3 sites
- Dipsastraea favus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Isopora palifera, 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- Limited membership in Pleistocene reef coral assemblages from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea: constancy during global change18
- Variations in Pleistocene coral assemblages in space and time in southern and northern central Ryukyu Islands, Japan17
- Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia14
- Coral variation in two deep drill cores: significance for the Pleistocene development of the Great Barrier Reef6
- Succession and diversity in the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Kenya Coast6
- Variable uplift rate through time: Holocene coral reef and neotectonics of Lutao, eastern Taiwan5
- 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 future5
- Faunal response to the instability of reef habitats: Pleistocene molluscan assemblages of Aldabra Atoll5
- Mass mortality following disturbance in Holocene coral reefs from Papua New Guinea2
- Interstadial coral reef terraces and relative sea-level changes during marine oxygen isotope stages 3-4, Kikai Island, central Ryukyus, Japan2
- Pleistocene reef development in the southwest Ryukyu Islands, Japan2
- Holocene sea-level rise and coral reef growth on a tectonically rising coast, Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea2
Each of the 101 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 Isopora palifera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- MDC Seamarc Maldives
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow 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 itIsopora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lamarck 1816)