Stylophora pistillata
Stylophora pistillata, commonly known as hood coral or smooth cauliflower coral, is a species of stony coral in the family Pocilloporidae. It is native to the Indo-Pacific region and is commonly used in scientific investigations.

ALLEMAND D · 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
- StylophoraPBDB
- Diet
- microcarnivore, photosymbioticPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Life habit
- intermediate-level epifaunal, colonial, clonalPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
96 occurrences of Stylophora pistillata 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
96 occurrences- Oligocene2%
- Miocene29%
- Pliocene13%
- Pleistocene49%
- Holocene6%
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
10 formations
- Nias Formation8
- Naha Formation · Ryukyu Group2
- Ghasr Ghand Formation1
- Progo Beds Formation1
- Miyako-jima Formation · Ryukyu Group1
- Nabire Formation1
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The named rock units Stylophora pistillata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 78 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Stylophora pistillata and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Stylophora pistillata and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
583 taxa- Porites20 sites
- Acropora11 sites
- Dipsastraea pallida11 sites
- Pocillopora damicornis11 sites
- Cyphastrea serailia10 sites
- Fungia10 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis10 sites
- Montipora10 sites
- Platygyra daedalea9 sites
- Seriatopora hystrix9 sites
- Seriatopora ornata9 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis8 sites
- Goniopora8 sites
- Plesiastrea versipora8 sites
- Alveopora7 sites
- Cyphastrea microphthalma7 sites
- Dipsastraea speciosa7 sites
- Acropora duncani6 sites
- Alveopora polyacantha6 sites
- Astrea curta6 sites
- Cyphastrea chalcidicum6 sites
- Diploastrea heliopora6 sites
- Echinopora lamellosa6 sites
- Favia6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 47 sites for Stylophora pistillata, 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
47 references- Limited membership in Pleistocene reef coral assemblages from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea: constancy during global change10
- Coral variation in two deep drill cores: significance for the Pleistocene development of the Great Barrier Reef7
- Past corals and recent reefs in Indonesia5
- Fossil corals from Eniwetok Atoll5
- Research on fossil corals from Java4
- Die Anthozoenfauna des Jungtertiärs von Borneo [Anthozoa from the Upper Tertiary of Borneo]4
- Quaternary fossil coral communities in uplifted strata along the Balochistan coast of Pakistan: understanding modern coral decline in the Arabian Sea3
- Ricerche eseguite negli anni 1941-1942 sopra i Coralli delle scogliere emerse di Massaua e Gibuti [Research done between 1941 and 1942 on emersed coral reefs of Massawa and Djibouti]3
- Geological and geographical distribution of reef-corals in Japan3
- Jungtertiäre Korallen von Nias, Java und Borneo, nebst einer Übersicht über die aus dem Känozoikum des indischen Archipels bekannten Arten3
- Field work Vanuatu2
- Recurrent patterns of coral community and sediment facies development through successive phases of Holocene inner-shelf reef growth and decline2
Each of the 96 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. 35 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 Stylophora pistillata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ALLEMAND D
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Stylophora pistillata 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 itStylophora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Esper 1797)