The octocoral genus Tubipora, commonly known as organ pipe coral, is widespread in shallow-water coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific. Ten nominal species have been described, however, most recent author recognise only one T. musica. Macrina and colleagues revisit the species richness of the genus using 136 colonies collected across six Indo-Pacific marine provinces. Morphological and phylogenomic analyses recovered at least 15 … Continue reading New paper: “Beyond Tubipora musica: Phylogenomics unveils the overlooked diversity and endemism of the hermatypic octocoral genus Tubipora”

Author: Andrew Baird The AU-collection of the Queensland Museum in Townsville consists of 864 hard corals specimens, with accompanying field images and tissue, collected by Dr Francesca Benzoni over the course of five major expeditions to the east-coast of Australia and the Coral Sea, funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies … Continue reading The AU-collection of the Queensland Museum in Townsville

Part of the mission of Project Phoenix (PP) is to give those interested in working with corals the tools to be able to identify the species they work with. Unlike my own undergraduate experience, our aim is to train participants in taxonomy rather than just specimen identification. The fact is that none of currently available … Continue reading Coral Taxonomy Workshop in Kenya, March 2026

Author: Andrew Baird The nomenclature recently published open-access by Crosbie et al. (2026), in the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, provides one of the most important piece of information for testing the validity of the 2,338 current nominal species of extant hermatypic Scleractinia – the type location (for the importance of the type location, see … Continue reading New paper: “A nomenclature for the extant hermatypic scleractinian corals including type locations and taxonomic status for 2,338 nominal species”