mussidae identification ?

[alanedinburgh]

hey
dont post often but hoping some of you guys on here can help. struggling to figure out what coral this is! The shop i got it from advised it was a cynarina but looks more like a scolymia to me. other suggestions i have had from another forum is that its a lobophylia. it is about 4 to 5 inches across and flesh extends quite a bit from skeleton and at night feeds like a scoly tho i have noticed there is still quite a bit of flesh still around it when light are out and in feeding mode. hope you guys can help :thumbsup:

 

[klepto]

How big is the skeleton? 4-5 inches is including the expanded tissue right?

I agree that it looks Scolymia sp. like. It seems a bit too fleshy and large to be Scolymia australis (but an image of the coral deflated, showing it's skeletal size would be helpful to confirm this).

It could be Mussa angulosa which is synonymous with Scolymia lacera.

http://coral.aims.gov.au/speciesPages/species_metadata/0590/view#

 

[Hormigaquatica]

Your shop was almost right (and IS right according to some sources...). That coral has gone under taxonomic revision a few times in the last several years. Various people have argued that it could be Cynarina lacrymalis, Cynarina deshayesiana, or Indophyllia macassarensis, among others. The most commonly recognized name at this point is Acanthophyllia deshayesiana aka "Meat Coral". It is a mussid, and so is related to Scolymia and Lobophyllia, but if you were to kill the piece and remove its flesh (don't) the skeletal features would be pretty different from those two. It does superficially look like Mussa angulosa, but Mussa has been illegal to collect for decades and has some slightly different features.

 

[klepto]

Sorry for the misinformation. I didn't notice that the range of the species was limited to the Caribbean.

I found this article that Sprung wrote a while ago to clear up some confusion about Cynaria genus and other related species.
I found it helpful.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2003/11/inverts

In my experience, Acanthophyllia deshayesiana is not a very difficult species to ID. I'm not sure who would argue that Cynaria lacrymalis or Indophyllia macassarensis are the same species as A. deshaysiana. Each one exhibits a clearly different morphology.

Honestly, I was going to suggest Indophyllia macassarensis, but I couldn't remember the name of the species!
I think it is the most likely candidate, but it's not commonly imported.

http://coral.aims.gov.au/speciesPages/species_metadata/0915/view

 

[alanedinburgh]

just a couple more pics.
had a feel of the skeleton and none of the teeth were very pronounced so i am still at a loss. the pics are of the coral as deflated as i could get it and you can still see there is still a lot of flesh unlike my other scolys.

 

[alanedinburgh]

anyone?

 

[willietang021]

scoly?

 

[sqwat]

scoly or acan maxima