It’s not everyday we get to learn about new species of corals, most of the recent description being of newly discovered soft, Octocoral species, but today we celebrate three new inductees to the Scleractinia hard corals. The three new described species are Tubastrea dendroida, T. violacea and T. chloromura which were all discovered in the and around the coral reefs of Hong Kong in the South China Sea.
Unlike some of the nondescript soft coral descriptions we’ve seen lately the three new species of sun coral do look quite visually distinct with each of them distinguishable from other species of Tubastrea. T. dendroida is a bright orange sun coral species which grows into large, arborescent colonies, T. chloromura stays a lot smaller with no branches and is a greenish shade of brown in life and the skeleton, while as the name suggests, T. violacea has a light purple hue over the majority of the colony and polyp and also doesn’t branch.
The three new quite discernible sun corals join the recently described Tubastrea megacorallita which is known as the fat-head dendro in the aquarium hobby and has long been rumored to originate from Hong Kong as well. We quite appreciate the extra level of flair that the scientists at Hong Kong Baptist University made their announcement as it is a very special occasion to discover and describe three new species of stony corals, they even made a video about it! [Zoological Studies]
