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.
与某些不描述的软珊瑚描述不同，我们最近看到的三种新的太阳珊瑚在视觉上看起来确实很明显，它们都可以与其他物种区分Tubastrea. T. dendroidais a bright orange sun coral species which grows into large, arborescent colonies,T. chloromurastays a lot smaller with no branches and is a greenish shade of brown in life and the skeleton, while as the name suggests,T. violaceahas 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 describedTubastrea megacorallitawhich 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 itisa very special occasion to discover and describe three new species of stony corals, they even made a video about it! [动物学研究]
