We call this the spur variety because it lives in ledges and caves in the shallow water groove and spur system on windward seaward reefs at depths of about 0 to 7m or so. Exposed to the normal tradewinds most of the year, these areas are hard to get to because they are extremely rough most of the time. The corals, although living in caves and ledges and generally forming clumps rather than the fan shapes of common or deep Stylaster species, still occasionally get ripped from the substrate and washed into the intertidal, or sometimes even rolled across the roof to the lagoon side. They share their caves with generally smaller colonies of brown and purple Distichopora, which are typically smaller and have thinner branches than their counterparts from other parts of the atoll.
A smaller Stylaster colony with the thin purple and brown Distichopora that live in the same caves.
Created 5 April 2020