Black Coral, Antipathes dichotoma
Black Coral, Antipathes dichotoma. Underwater photograph taken in Banderas Bay, Puerta Vallarta, Jalisco, July 2026. Photograph and identification courtesy of Greg Timms, youtube.com/@CoralmasterdivesPuertoVallarta/videos.
Phylogeny: Black Coral, Antipathes dichotoma (Pallas, 1766), is in the Class Hexacorallia, the Order Antipatharia and the Antipathidae Family of Hexacorals. There are nine genera within the Antipathidae Family and sixty-seven species in the Antipathes Genus. They are named for their black calcareous skeletons.
Morphology: Black Coral can grow to a height of 1.0 m (3 feet 3 inches). It forms a sparsely branching structure with slender, flexible branches arranged irregularly around the trunk. The angle at which the branches project is variable but is often nearly 90°. The smaller branches bear four to six rows of short, smooth conical spines. The polyps are 2.0 to 2.4 mm in diameter with three or four polyps per cm. They are arranged in a single series on the smallest branches and in multiple series on the largest ones. There is considerable variation in appearance of neighboring colonies and in different parts of the same colony.
Habitat and Distribution: The Black Coral is well documented within the Mediterranean Sea. Its range and distribution in Mexican waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have not been well documented. In the Mediterranean it is found at depths between 200 m (656 feet) and 300 m (984 feet).
Diet: Antipathiae corals are sessile suspension feeders that depend on water movement to bring them food, such as amphipods, fish larvae, and other plankton.
Predators: Predation of the Black Coral has not been formally documented.
Reproduction: Black Coral colonies are gonochoric (male or female for life). They reproduce sexually through broadcast spawning with external fertilization. They can also reproduce asexually through fragmentation and by sending out runners (stolonization).
Ecosystem Roles: The Black Coral is poorly studied and very little is known about their behavioral patterns. The conservation status of this Black Coral has not been formally doucmented.
Synonyms: Antipathes aenea and Antipathes mediterranea