---
title: Hood Coral (Stylophora pistillata)
scientific_name: Stylophora pistillata
common_name: Hood Coral
taxon: Hard corals
published: 2026-09-04T14:13:04.492Z
updated: 2026-09-04T14:27:47.235Z
tags: Hood Coral, Stylophora pistillata, Hard corals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hard-corals/hood-coral
---

# Hood Coral (*Stylophora pistillata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hard corals (*Scleractinia*)
- **Size:** colonies to about 30 cm across
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Photosynthetic
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef tops and upper slopes, in the light
- **Reproduction:** Brooder, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- thick blunt branches, often forked and swollen at the tips rather than pointed
- cream, pink, blue or brown, with the color shifting by depth and light
- surface finely beaded, the polyps set in shallow cups with a hooded rim
- low rounded colonies on shallow reef top, not a spreading table or a thin plate
- colonies to about 30 cm across

The corals at the northern end of this sea survive summers that would kill the same species almost anywhere else, and the reason is a bottleneck they passed through thousands of years ago.

After the last ice age the basin was recolonized from the south, and everything moving north had to cross the hot, shallow strait at its mouth. That crossing worked as a filter: only heat-tolerant genotypes got through. Their descendants now live in the cooler north, several degrees below the temperature they can actually stand - colonies in the Gulf of Aqaba have been held at 34 C, some 7 C above their local summer maximum, without bleaching. It is the main reason this sea is discussed as a refuge while reefs elsewhere are dying, and this coral is the animal most of that work was done on.

It is the laboratory rat of coral biology. Its genome has been sequenced, and it is the standard species for studies of calcification, of the algae living inside coral tissue, and of how a colony tells its own tissue from a neighbor's. One reason is convenience: it broods its young rather than releasing eggs to the current, so a colony in a tank delivers swimming larvae on a lunar schedule instead of one night a year.

On the reef it is a low, rounded colony of thick blunt branches, forked and often swollen at the ends, cream to pink to blue depending on the light. The branch surface is finely beaded, each polyp sitting in a shallow cup with a hooded rim, which is where the English name comes from.

One caution for anyone matching photographs: the name covers more than one animal. Barcoding has shown that Stylophora pistillata as usually applied is a complex of several distinct lineages, and the regional guide notes that a second described species from here is probably the same thing again.

## Also known as

- **English:** Smooth Cauliflower Coral, hood coral, pistillate coral
- **Arabic:** مرجان القرنبيط الناعم, مرجان القلنسوة
- **Hebrew:** שיחן שכיח
- **Italian:** Corallo zampa di gatto, Madrepora zampa di gatto, Corallo cappuccio
- **German:** Griffel-Koralle, Griffelkoralle
- **Czech:** pórovník různotvarý
- **Japanese:** ショウガサンゴ, ショウガサンゴ［ヤスリショウガサンゴ］, ヤスリショウガサンゴ
- **Chinese:** 柱狀珊瑚, 萼形柱珊瑚, 萼柱珊瑚
- **Russian:** Стилофора
- **LT:** Piestelinis gaubtenis
- **TH:** ปะการังเกล็ดคว่ำ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Acropora digitata* (Pallas, 1766)
- *Anthopora cucullata* Gray, 1835
- *Madrepora (Porites) pistillata* (Esper, 1792)
- *Madrepora digitata* Pallas, 1766
- *Madrepora digitata spathulata* (Ehrenberg, 1834)
- *Madrepora pistillaris* Esper, 1797
- *Madrepora pistillata* Esper, 1792
- *Matrepora pistillata* (Esper, 1792)
- *Millepora cellulata* Forsskål, 1775
- *Pocillopora andreossyi* Audouin, 1826
- *Porites digitata* (Pallas, 1766)
- *Porites digitata var. spathulata* Ehrenberg, 1834
- *Porites digitate* (Pallas, 1766)
- *Porites elongata* Lamarck, 1816
- *Porites pistillata* (Esper, 1792)
- *Porites scabra* Lamarck, 1816
- *Porites subdigitata* Lamarck, 1816
- *Sideropora digitata* (Pallas, 1766)
- *Sideropora digitata var. coalescens* Dana, 1846
- *Sideropora elongata* (Lamarck, 1816)
- *Sideropora mordax* Dana, 1846
- *Sideropora palmata* Blainville, 1830
- *Sideropora pistillata* (Esper, 1792)
- *Sideropora subdigitata* (Lamarck, 1816)
- *Stylophora cellulosa* Quelch, 1886

## Range

Australia, China, East Africa, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Marshall Islands, Mozambique, New Zealand, North Pacific Ocean, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, South Africa, South Pacific Ocean, United States

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hard-corals/hood-coral)*
*Updated: September 4, 2026*