Resources

These resources are available to those interested in hard coral taxonomy or field identification. The downloadable contents are for personal use only and Project Phoenix and members assume no responsibility for any special, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages arising out of or in connection with the use of these contents. Please note that the external links are not provided or maintained by us and therefore we cannot guarantee the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the information on these external websites.

Protocols

A Protocol for Coral Collection & Curation
(PDF: 1.8 MB)
A protocol we use to collect and curate coral specimens for taxonomic research purposes

Additional files:

Field Guides

Hard Corals of the Coral Sea
(PDF: 25 MB)
An illustrated overview of 147 species, 60 genera of hard corals observed in the Coral Sea

The Amun Ini House Reef Guide
(PDF: 1.2 MB)
An illustrated 1 page guide to commonly found hard coral species in Bohol, Philippines

Access to Type Material

The following institutions are some of the locations the physical type material has been deposited. Some have online catalogues of their collections that include type material and occasionally, this includes image of the type material available for downloading. At some institutions, curators will also organise images on request. Learn more about type material here.

Country	Museum	URL
Australia	Australian Museum	Collection search
Australia	Museum of Tropical Queensland, Queensland Museum Network	Collection search
Australia	Western Australian Museum	Collection search
Austria	Naturhistorisches Museum Wien	Museum website
France	Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle	Collection search
Germany	Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt	Museum website
Germany	Museum für Naturkunde Berlin	Museum website
Germany	Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg	Museum website
Italy	Museo Regionale Di Scienze Naturali	Museum website Collection via Google
Philippines	Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences, Silliman University	Institution website
Philippines	Department of Biology, University of San Carlos	Institution website
Philippines	University of the Philippines Diliman Marine Science Institute	Institution website
Russia	A.V. Zhirmunsky National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences	Institution website
South Africa	Oceanographic Research Institute, South African Association for Marine Biological Research	Institution website
South Africa	South African Museum, Iziko Museums of South Africa	Museum website
UK	Natural History Museum	Collection search
USA	The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University	Museum website
USA	National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution	Collection search
USA	Peabody Essex Museum	Museum website
USA	Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History	Collection search

Accessing Type Localities

An extensive and ongoing project has involved the identification of type locations for all nominal species through the examination of the original type material and associated texts. While this work is still in progress, we have been able to produce a map of the type locations for coral species originally described from the Great Barrier Reef shown below. We will continue to add species type locations in future.

To view the full list of species currently in this map, click “view larger map” in the top right corner.

Systematics

Corals old-to-new Conversion List
(Excel: 70 KB)
The names of many coral species have changed most often because they have been moved from one genera/families to another. All of these changes in the order Scleractinia are recorded in meticulous detail by Prof. Bert Hoeksema and Dr. Stephen Cairns at World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), however, this spreadsheet offers a quick way to convert the old species names to the new. If you need to be sure of the current new names, please double check at WoRMS.