Great Star Coral
Caroline Ravizzoni Girotto
9/01/2022
Montastraea is a genus of colonial stony coral located in the Caribbean seas. It is the single
genus in the monotypic family Montastraeidae and comprises a single species, Montastraea
cavernosa, known for its common name as great star coral. This species is common and tends to
be the more abundant of the in environments with moderate sedimentation.
Great star coral colonies create huge boulders and domes over 1.5 meters in diameter, in shallow
and moderate water depths. In waters that are more deep, this coral has been seen to grow as a
plate shape. It is found throughout most reef environments, and is the predominant coral at
depths of around 10 to 30 meters.
Although this Caribbean coral may look like as one organism, this coral colonies are made up of
several genetically identical polyp. Its polyps are the size of a human thumb and completely
extend at night. This coral It is a hermatypic (stony or reef-building) coral, meaning that they
form an aragonite skeletal structure and carries out symbiosis with zooxanthellae, a
photosynthetic algae that lives in the coral’s tissue. (Lesser et al., 2004)*.
The Montastraea cavernosa is native to Trinidad and Tobago. It occurs across the Atlantic
Ocean; in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Bahamas, Bermuda, Brazil, and some parts of
West Africa (Aronson et al., 200). It is an abundant coral throughout its range and is considered
to be more resilient to habitat loss and other threats due to its large population sizes and stable
levels of genetic variation.
In the Caribbean, shallow populations of M. cavernosa have been categorized based on several
phenotypic traits including sensitivity to bleaching, disease susceptibility and mortality, and
found to be highly resistant to many biotic and abiotic stressors (Fitt and Warner, 1995).
According to the IUCN Red list, due to its resilience, Montastrea cavernosa is considered a
species of least concern.
In general, the major threat to all 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. Considering these threats and the resilience of
the species M. cavernosa, I predict that in a time period of ten years, this species will be affected
negatively, and its status will change to Near Threat.
The bleaching that is occurring leaves all corals vulnerable to diseases, stunt their growth ,
affects their reproduction and impacts on other species that depend on the coral communities
making the entire reef ecosystem to collapse. The decline in species diversity of other less
resilient corals, due to these major threats, will affect the entire reef and therefore will affect the
M. cavernosa. With a smaller abundance of corals in the reef, [Link] will be more
susceptible to hurricane damage, bioerosion by sponges and other organisms and predation for
example, so my prediction it is for this species to change to Near Threat in ten, or less, years.
Literature Cited
Aronson, R., Bruckner, A., Moore, J., Precht, B. & E. Weil 2008. Montastraea cavernosa. In:
IUCN 2010. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Fitt, W. K., and Warner, M. E. (1995). Bleaching patterns of four species of Caribbean reef
corals. Biol. Bull. 189, 298–307
Gintert, B. E., Manzello, D. P., Enochs, I. C., Kolodziej, G., Carlton, R., Gleason, A. C. R., et al.
(2018). Marked annual coral bleaching reselience of an inshore patch reef in the Florida Keys: a
nugget of hope, aberrance, or last man standing? Coral Reefs 37, 533–547
*Lesser MP, Jarett JK, Fiore CL, Thompson MM, Pankey MS and Macartney KJ (2020) A New
“Business as Usual” Climate Scenario and the Stress Response of the Caribbean Coral
Montastraea cavernosa. Front. Mar. Sci. 7:728. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2020.00728
Lesser MP, Falcón LI, Rodríuez-Román A, Enríquez S, Hoegh-Guldberg O, Iglesias-Prieto R
(2007) Nitrogen fixation by symbiotic cyanobacteria provides a source of nitrogen for the
scleractinian coral Montastraea cavernosa. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 346:143-152. [Link]
10.3354/meps07008
