Montipora: A Practical Guide to the Variety of Forms Part 1

If there is a group of coral, where we find ourselves struggling to properly identify to the species level, that’s Montipora!

Montipora are probably the most popular coral right after Acropora, it’s a fast growing, very colorful group of SPS coral. We thought that it deserves a little bit more understanding and proper identification. So we tried to simplify its description, and keep it to the important facts.

Large colonies of Montipora are always a sight to remember. here Montipora hodgsoni in Komodo, Indonesia

As Veron puts it, in its bible book ‘Corals of the World’, ‘The often highlighted taxonomic difficulties of Montipora stem from the large number of species and the presence of several groups of similar species. Otherwise the genus does not deserve its taxonomic reputation; it has a wide range of useful, it not always conservative, skeletal characters.’ Well to the common coral taxonomist, it might look easy, but for the common reefer, that is not equipped with a microscope it’s a little bit more complicated.

Montipora Hodgsoni in a field of M. stellata

That’s why we decided to produce a serie on Montipora, and the 12 groups that Veron uses to classify them.

First of all, what Veron means, is that there are skeleton surface characters that make species identification some kind of easy, so even though we don’t have a microscope, a dead piece of coral… often a good macro shot allows to spot these characters.

What are these Montipora characters?

Tuberculae:

On this close up, the Turbeculae larger than a corallite can be easily spotted

This surface growth elaborations are bigger than a corallite. Sometime these structure are fused into ridges. The very large dome-shaped ‘tuberculae’ are called ‘verrucae’.

On this close up, we can see the tuberculae of this M. foliosa fusioning together to create ridges.

Papillae

These growth character are smaller than a corallite. And often surround the corallite, and in this case, they are called thecale.

Small thecal papillae surrounding the polyps, smaller than corallite can easily be spotted on this close up

Corallite are either immersed into the surface coenosteum or situated at the base of a funnel like depression.

Then after there are 6 different classic growth form:

Plate-like or laminar, columnar, sub-massive, massive or encrusting, branching and encrusting.

Once you get the growth form, you just need to look at papillae, and tuberculae, then you know what group they are. Just need to compare among the few species of the group.

Only one Genus of Coral, can be confused with Montipora, it’s Porites. But Porites has a much denser skeleton, with columellae, so the polyp center are filled with material while it’s hollow in Montipora. Surface is also smoother in Porites, with larger, packed polyps.

Porites rus being overgrown by Montipora aequituberculata

After this short introduction, we will view the 12 different groups in a set of 6 posts. Hopefully this will series will both ease identification and reduce confusion as well as increase appreciation in this amazing group of SPS corals.

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Vincent Chalias

Vincent is a coral passionate aquarist with extensive experience in the industry, travelling the world to learn about corals. His background is a master degree in Marine Aquaculture. He set up the first Indonesian Coral mariculture farms at the beginning of the century and spent over 20 years in Indonesia running them. He's been extensively diving and documenting corals all over the Indo-Pacific.