Saturday 25 May Honeycomb coral (Favites abdita) What’s the
World’s Favourite Species?Find out here. Honeycomb coral fact
file - Find out more - Print factsheet Honeycomb coral
description Favites abdita is part of the Faviidae family, a
common group of reef-building, ‘stony’ corals, characterised by
a hard, calcareous skeleton, called a ‘corallite’. Favites
abdita forms what are known as ‘massive’ colonies, meaning that
the coral grows in a characteristic mound or dome shape which
has roughly similar dimensions (typically close to a metre) in
all directions (3). Favites abdita is usually pale brown, darker
coloured in more turbid (cloudy) environments, with brown or
green oral discs (the soft tissue between the mouth and the
surrounding tentacles of the anemone-like polyp), and thick,
rounded corallite walls (4).Top Honeycomb coral biology A
honeycomb coral colony is composed of numerous individual
polyps, which can reproduce asexually by a process called
‘budding’ (where each polyp divides itself into two o