Acropora digitifera

Acropora digitifera is a reef-building coral species that forms compact, digitate colonies with finger-like branches, giving the genus its common name of staghorn corals. Like other scleractinian corals, it secretes a calcium carbonate skeleton and hosts symbiotic zooxanthellae algae within its tissues, which provide the coral with energy through photosynthesis and give it its coloration. Colonies grow through the budding of individual polyps, which extend tentacles at night to capture plankton.

As a structural reef-builder, this species contributes to the three-dimensional framework that supports diverse marine communities, offering shelter and habitat for fish, invertebrates, and other reef organisms.

The species occupies shallow marine neritic waters across the western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean, with recorded populations in Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, and Japan, typically on reef flats and slopes exposed to wave action.

Its decline is driven by a wide range of ongoing pressures, including sediment and nutrient runoff from agricultural and forestry effluents, domestic wastewater discharge, coastal mining and quarrying, and habitat disturbance from recreational activities and fishing. Storms and flooding events cause physical damage, while invasive species, coral diseases, and outbreaks of problematic native species such as crown-of-thorns starfish add further mortality. Broader habitat shifting linked to changing ocean conditions compounds these localized stressors.

Conservation responses include marine protected areas across parts of its range, water quality management programs targeting agricultural and urban runoff, and coral restoration efforts involving fragment propagation and outplanting. Research institutions continue to study this species' thermal tolerance and genetics given its use as a model organism in coral biology.

The population trend is decreasing, and the species is classified as Endangered, reflecting the cumulative and continuing nature of the threats it faces.