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| soft corals text index | photo index |
| Phylum Cnidaria > Class Anthozoa > Subclass Alcyonaria/Octocorallia > Order Alcyonacea |
| Starry
leathery soft coral Awaiting identification* Family Alcyoniidae updated Dec 11 Where seen? This leathery coral with polyps like little glass stars is sometimes seen on some of our shores. Among coral rubble and sandy areas near reefs. Features: The colony about 10-15cm in diameter. Sometimes covering large areas of 50cm or more. The colony is usually thick, disk-like with a highly ruffled edge that extended into fingers or lobes. The leathery common tissue usually has many short, fat spindle-shaped structures usually paler than the common tissue which is usually beige, pinkish or yellowish. It has only one kind of polyp (autozooid) although there are very tiny spots among the autozooids giving the leathery common tissue has a rather 'crystalline' appearance. The transparent polyps are tiny (0.2cm), 8 short cylindrical tentacles with tiny branches, the body column hardly seen. The autozooids are only found on the upper side of the common tissue and tend to be clustered on the edges of the disk, with fewer in the middle of the disk. The autozooids can retract completely into the common tissue. During one night trip, a large colony was seen with many tiny brittle stars all over the surface. This has not been observed during daylight visits. |
 Terumbu Berkas, Jan 10  Many fat, spindle shaped structures. |
 Terumbu Bemban, Jul 11 |
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Starry leathery soft corals on Singapore shores
 Pulau Jong, Jul 07 |
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 Cyrene Reef, May 08 |
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more photos of starry leathery soft corals on Singapore shores
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4
*Species are difficult to positively identify without close examination.
On this website, they are grouped by external features for convenience of display.
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References
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Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Museum and
Art Gallery of the Northern Territoriy. 264 pp|
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