Montipora digitata
species of cnidarian
Montipora digitata, also known as finger coral, is a species of stony coral. It is found in shallow water in East Africa, the Indo-West Pacific, Kenya, Mozambique and Rodriguez.
Description
Colonies of Montipora digitata are digitate or bushy with vertically aligned, anastomosing branches, and forming hemispherical mounds that may be 40 centimetres (16 in) or more in diameter. The corallites are small and deeply sunk into the skeleton, giving it a pitted appearance. This coral is usually pale cream, pale yellow or brown.
Biology
Montipora digitata is a zooxanthellate species of coral. It obtains most of its nutritional needs from the symbiotic dinoflagellates that live inside its soft tissues. These photosynthetic organisms provide the coral with organic carbon and nitrogen, sometimes providing up to 90% of their host's energy needs for metabolism and growth. Its remaining needs are met by the planktonic organisms caught by the tentacles of the polyps.
Montipora digitata is a simultaneous hermaphrodite.
“Montipora digitata” enters the record as species of cnidarian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Montipora, digitata and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Montipora digitata” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Montipora, digitata and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q150194. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Montipora digitata” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.