Pavona clavus
species of cnidarian
Pavona clavus (common name shoulder blade coral) is a species of colonial stony coral in the family Agariciidae. It is a widespread but uncommon species known from the Indo-Pacific region, the South China Sea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. A P. clavus colony in the Solomon Islands is considered to be the world's largest known coral.
Distribution and habitat
Pavona clavus is typically found on coral reefs at depths of 2–40 m (6 ft 7 in – 131 ft 3 in), often on slopes and in areas exposed to currents. It prefers protected or semi-protected habitats and is absent from very shallow, high energy reef platforms.
P. clavus is widely distributed, with its range extending from the western Indian Ocean to the eastern Pacific Ocean along with the South China Sea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. This range includes the coasts of eastern Africa and West Asia (including the Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Réunion, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, and Yemen), Asia (including Brunei, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam) and Oceania (including American Samoa, Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Guam, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna), through to western Central America and South America (including Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama).
Description
Pavona clavus is a cream, yellow, brown, or pale grey coral typically forming columnar or club-shaped colonies, though it may also form flattened plates. The columns are generally smooth and uniform in size, typically measuring up to 20 cm (7.9 in) tall and 3–5 cm (1.2–2.0 in) in diameter. They are capable of dividing but not fusing.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pavona clavus” as species of cnidarian. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of cnidarian. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3953519. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pavona clavus” 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.