The Duncan coral is one of the most distinctive, hardy and beloved of all corals which grows well in a wide range of aquarium setups. Reefers tend to think ofDuncanopsammiaas uniquely Australian as that is where all of the imported colonies are collected but this species was just discovered in West Papua, Indonesia greatly extending the known range of this coral in the wild.
We’ve personally observed a single colony of Duncan in Papua New Guinea right across the Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef andD. Axifuga在Ea也被观察到的吗st Timor but the discovery in eastern Indonesia is a first for the biggest archipelago in the world and one of the biggest coral exporting countries in the world.
使这个范围扩展如此令人兴奋的原因不是我们期望从印度尼西亚出口邓肯的野生殖民地，而是打开了这种受欢迎的珊瑚有一天可能会被培养的可能性，这甚至还没有真正在澳大利亚获得关注。关于珊瑚收集和从昆士兰州出口配额的所有不确定性以及有关的具体限制Duncanopsammiaat least there’s at least the possibility that farmed Duncans could pick up the slack if the Australian supply ever dried up.
The population of Duncans was discovered in murky water around fifteen feet deep on a sediment-rich, inshore reef at Bird’s Head Peninsula, not the kind of dive site that is popular with SCUBA divers which could help to explain why it took so long to addDuncanopsammiato the huge list of corals from Indonesia. Since the species has already been documented in East Timor it’s almost certain that further exploration of mucky inshore reefs in Southern and Eastern Indonesia would reveal more examples of this wonderful coral living outside of Australia. Who knows, these far flung examples ofDuncanopsammiafrom Indonesia might even exhibit different colors and growth forms than reefers are used to, only time will tell. [MDPI]
