Invertebrate · Stinging · Hard corals

Brain Root Coral

Lobophyllia corymbosa (Forskål, 1775)

syn. Caryophyllia corymbosa, Lobophyllia corymbosa var. cactus, Lobophyllia corymbosa var. ringens, Lobophyllia eydouxi, Lobophyllia eydouxii, Lobophyllia fistulosa +10 more

5 - 30 cm<40 mCITES IIVulnerable

1059

Lobophyllia corymbosa, commonly known as lobed cactus coral or brain root coral, is a species of large polyp stony coral belonging to the family Lobophylliidae. This coral is typically found in shallow waters on reefs in the 🌊 Red Sea, off the coast of East Africa, and in various locations across the tropical Indo-Pacific region.

Lobophyllia corymbosa exhibits two distinct growth forms, either forming flat sheets or hemispherical domes. While its diameter is typically below 50 cm (20 in), larger specimens can be several times that size, particularly in the 🌊 Red Sea. The individual lobes of the coral are connected at their bases and measure 15 to 30 cm (6 to 12 in) in length and 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 in) in width. The coral's polyps are large and each secretes a corallite, which is a stony cup surrounding the polyp. These irregularly shaped corallites form the coral's skeletal structure. Within each corallite, there is a noticeable wall, and numerous radiating vertical ridges known as septa. These septa are narrow inside the corallite but grow thicker and longer on the walls, giving the coral a prickly appearance. The corallites themselves generally resemble an hourglass shape, containing thick and fleshy polyps. During the daytime, the polyps are usually retracted, but they extend their tentacles at night to feed. The polyps vary in color, ranging from bluish or greenish-grey to yellowish-brown. This variation in color is due to the presence of zooxanthellae, minute symbiotic dinoflagellates that reside within the coral's tissues. These photosynthetic algae utilize sunlight to produce organic compounds, which the coral utilizes as part of its nutritional requirements.

The 🌊 Red Sea serves as the type locality for Lobophyllia corymbosa. This species is also found in the tropical 🌊 Indian Ocean and the central and eastern 🌊 Pacific Ocean, typically at depths of up to 40 meters (130 ft). Its distribution extends to western areas such as 🇲🇿 Mozambique, 🇲🇬 Madagascar, the 🇸🇨 Seychelles, Réunion, 🇲🇺 Mauritius, Aldabra (🇸🇨 Seychelles), and Chagos (🇮🇴 British Indian Ocean Territory). Additionally, it occurs in eastern regions including 🇦🇺 Australia, 🇮🇩 Indonesia, 🇯🇵 Japan, and the 🌊 East China Sea. Lobophyllia corymbosa is commonly observed on upper reef slopes, although its abundance varies across different locations. It is worth noting that Lobophyllia hemprichii, a closely related species, is more prevalent than Lobophyllia corymbosa in some areas.

Why it's threatened

Residential & commercial development

Housing & urban areas · Commercial & industrial areas · Tourism & recreation areas

Transportation & service corridors

Shipping lanes

Biological resource use

Intentional use: (subsistence/small scale) [harvest] · Unintentional effects: (subsistence/small scale) [harvest] · Motivation Unknown/Unrecorded

Human intrusions & disturbance

Recreational activities

Invasive species, genes & disease

Unspecified species

Pollution

Type Unknown/Unrecorded · Soil erosion, sedimentation · Ozone

Climate change & severe weather

Temperature extremes · Storms & flooding

This species is highly susceptible to bleaching and moderately susceptible to disease. This species exhibited high bleaching and mortality in the 1998 bleaching event in Palau (Bruno et al. 2001).

The collection of this species for the aquarium trade may lead to overharvest and localised reductions in abundance, especially for populations of naturally rare species (Bruckner and Borneman 2006). However, the wild collection of corals is highly selective and considered low impact in the long-term relative to other activities such as coral mining and dynamite fishing (Green and Shirley 1999, Pratchett et al. 2020).

In general, the major threat to corals is global climate change, in particular, temperature extremes leading to bleaching and increased susceptibility to disease, increased severity of ENSO events and storms, and ocean acidification.

Coral disease has emerged as a serious threat to coral reefs worldwide with increases in numbers of diseases, coral species affected, and geographic extent (Ward et al. 2004, Sutherland et al. 2004, Sokolow et al. 2009). Outbreaks of coral diseases have damaged coral reefs worldwide with the most widespread, virulent, and longest running coral disease outbreak currently occurring on the Florida Reef Tract and throughout the Caribbean. The disease, stony coral tissue loss disease, has been ongoing since 2014 (Precht et al. 2016) and has devastated affected reefs along Florida (Walton et al. 2018, Williams et al. 2021) and throughout the Caribbean (Alvarez-Filip et al. 2019, Kramer et al. 2019). Numerous disease outbreaks have also occurred in the Indo-Pacific (Willis et al. 2004, Aeby et al. 2011; 2016), Indian Ocean (Raj et al. 2016) and Persian Gulf (Howells et al. 2020). Escalating anthropogenic stressors combined with the threats associated with global climate change of increases in coral disease, frequency and duration of coral bleaching and ocean acidification place coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific at high risk of collapse.

Localized threats to corals include fisheries, human development (industry, settlement, tourism, and transportation), changes in native species dynamics (competitors, predators, pathogens and parasites), invasive species (competitors, predators, pathogens and parasites), dynamite fishing, chemical fishing, pollution from agriculture and industry, domestic pollution, sedimentation, and human recreation and tourism activities. The severity of these combined threats to the global population of each individual species is not known.

Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.