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| hard corals text index | photo index |
| Phylum Cnidaria > Class Anthozoa > Subclass Zoantharia/Hexacorallia > Order Scleractinia > Family Siderastreidae |
| Sandpaper
corals Psammocora sp. Family Siderastreidae updated Oct 11 Where seen? These corals with tiny corallites are commonly seen on many of our Southern shores, especially the kind that forms crinkled colonies. Those that form smooth boulder shapes are less commonly seen. Features: Colonies 15-30cm. The colony may be shaped like boulders, pillars, flattened branches or even be encrusting or plate-like. The tiny corallites don't stick much out of the surface and merely give the skeleton a granular texture which gives the common name. When the polyp is retracted, the tiny holes of the corallite look like tiny petals of a flower. Polyps tiny (0.2cm) with short pointy tentacles. With the tentacles extended, the colony has a furry look. Those that are branching often have tiny animals among their branches. It's hard to distinguish the different species of Psammocora without close examination of small features. On this website, they are grouped into boulder sandpaper coral (colony is boulder-shaped) and crinkled sand paper coral (colony has short crinkled branches). Status and threats: Some Psammocora species recorded for Singapore are listed as globally Near Threatened by the IUCN. Like other creatures of the intertidal zone, they are affected by human activities such as reclamation and pollution. Trampling by careless visitors, and over-collection also have an impact on local populations. |
 Tiny petal-shaped holes.  Granular surface giving their common name of sandpaper coral. |
 A tiny shrimp. Sentosa, Oct 04 |
Sandpaper corals on Singapore shores
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| Psammocora
species recorded for Singapore from Danwei Huang, Karenne P. P. Tun, L. M Chou and Peter A. Todd. 30 Dec 2009. An inventory of zooxanthellate sclerectinian corals in Singapore including 33 new records **the species found on many shores in Danwei's paper. in red are those listed as threatened on the IUCN global list.
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Links
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Australian Institute of Marine Science, Australia. 3 volumes.
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