Corynactis californica
Carlgren, 1936 · speciesAt a glance
Sources10 archives
Databases and archives Corynactis californica's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation4 languages↗
Animal Diversity WebUniv. of Michigan MZspecies account↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility1 698 records↗
OBISOcean Biodiversity Information System232 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI165 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics37 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
Catalogue of LifeCOLtaxonomy↗
GLoBIGlobal Biotic Interactionsbiotic interactions↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
Small red strawberry anemones growing on the back of a masking crab Corynactis californica is a brightly colored colonial anthozoan corallimorph. Unlike the Atlantic true sea anemone, Actinia fragacea, that bears the same common name, strawberry anemone, this species is a member of the order Corallimorpharia, and is the only member found in the North American West Coast. Other common names include club-tipped anemone and strawberry corallimorpharian. The anemone can live up to at least 50 meters deep on vertical rock walls, and at the bottom of kelp forests. It is known to carpet the bottom of some areas, like Campbell River in British Columbia, and Monterey Bay in California. The strawberry anemone grows no larger than 2.5 centimeters. The anemone can be red, pink, purple, brown, yellow, or completely white. They possess tentacles that are white or transparent with bulbous tips. The strawberry anemone resembles sea anemones in that they lack a calcareous skeleton, but are closer related to stony corals in that they lack basilar muscles. This species lacks photosynthetic symbionts. The strawberry anemone is known to reproduce both sexually and asexually, with asexual reproduction used to cover more available ground. The anemone is known to attack other species of sea anemone and coral that they are competitive with, as to take over the areas left behind by the previous occupants. They attack with toxins passed through prolonged contact. The same method is used in self-defense and in food consumption.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology1
Habitat & environment2
Other traits2
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Corynactis californica has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard periods (Jurassic, Cretaceous…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. The dashed rules marked ✦ are the five great mass extinctions. The orange marker is the DNA clock: DNA accumulates mutations at a roughly steady rate, so comparing this species' DNA with its relatives estimates when the lineage split off — independently of any fossil.
Record type1 930 records
Range
Depth
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions4 of 11 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| Santa Barbara Museum of Natural Historylocation not on record | 41 |
| CASlocation not on record | 27 |
| Stanford Universitylocation not on record | 14 |
| Washington, US | 10 |
| Florida Museum of Natural History- Zoology, Paleontology & Paleobotanylocation not on record | 9 |
| Victoria, CA | 9 |
| Royal British Columbia Museumlocation not on record | 4 |
| Centre for Biodiversity Genomicslocation not on record | 2 |
| Los Angeles, US | 2 |
| New Haven, US | 1 |
| WoRMS Editorial Boardlocation not on record | 1 |
Where the DNA of Corynactis californica was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
Measured at samplingin-field
Modelled climatemodelled
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.