Millepora braziliensis Verrill, 1868

Amaral, Fernanda M. D., Steiner, Andrea Q., Broadhurst, Matt K. & Cairns, Stephen D., 2008, An overview of the shallow-water calcified hydroids from Brazil (Hydrozoa: Cnidaria), including the description of a new species, Zootaxa 1930, pp. 56-68 : 59

Millepora braziliensis Verrill, 1868

Similar to M. alcicornis , M. braziliensis , is also highly variable in form. According to Amaral (1997) and Amaral et al. (2002), most colonies are honeycombed, but can also be hemispheric, ramified, columnar, laminate, fan shaped, totally incrusting, or a mixture of these forms. The surface texture also varies, but in most colonies tends towards irregular. Laborel (1970) suggested that M. braziliensis varied in shape according to wave exposure: colonies in sheltered sites tend to have laminate and fine branching forms, whereas specimens in more exposed areas tend to have more massive, honeycombed forms. Nevertheless, Amaral (1997) and Amaral et al. (2002) did not confirm these observations, with specimens collected from a single area of a reef at Tamandaré Beach (Pernambuco) observed to have several different forms. Millepora braziliensis has a very irregular surface texture, ampullae that varied from shallow to deep ( Table 1 ), and the greatest mean number of dactylopores per gastropore ( Table 2 ). The mean diameters of gastropores and dactylopores are similar to M. nitida ( Table 2 ) (Amaral 1997).