Orange cup coral
Tubastrea coccinea
Lesson, 1829
Description:
Colony spherical to mound-shaped, firmly attached, up to 14 cm in diameter. Coenosteum of larger colonies may be up to 3 cm thick. Corallites cylindrical, up to 11 mm in diameter, ranging from flush with the coenosteum to projecting up to 4 cm above the coenosteum.
Septa hexamerally arranged in 4 cycles. All septa non-exsert. Pali absent; columella usually small and spongy.
Color:
Tissue covering the skeleton usually deep red to orange, while the tentacles are often bright orange to yellow.
Habitat:
It often occurs on dock pilings, buoys, cave ceilings and on the undersides of large rocks, down to 40 m. Specimen in deeper, calm water have larger and more widely spaced corallites, than specimens in shallow, high-energy water.
Distribution:
Not reported Florida, absent or rare in the northwest Caribbean and a scattered distribution throughout the Bahamas, eastern and southern Caribbean. Probably an Indo-Pacific species, introduced in the Caribbean in the late 1930's or early 1940's at Curaçao and/or Puerto Rico.