As a type of brain coral, the surface of the skeleton is a network of winding, curving valleys and ridges (or walls) that roughly resemble the familiar folding architecture of the mammal cerebrum.

C. natans and the sympatric and similarly named boulder star coral (Montastraea annularis) are less likely to be smothered by algal bloom, and have also weathered reef-wrecking Hurricane Allen off the coast of Jamaica in 1980.

However, bleaching induced widespread incidence of the coral syndrome White Plague Type II, resulting in bleaching-related mortality of 42% among C. natans over 9 months, nearly as high as that for P.

[7][3] Colpophyllia natans is considered one of the dominant reef-building corals of the Caribbean region and is a familiar species of the shallower reef ledges and slopes.

A particularly aggressive form of white plague known as WPL III has so far been documented attacking only very large colonies of C. natans and Montastraea annularis.

Other hosted diseases include white plague types I and II, dark spot, and skeletal anomalies, such as tumours and galls.

Another pathogen, so far unidentified, killed in one year, between 2001 and 2002, approximately half of the corals present in Bird Key Reef of the Dry Tortugas.

Met naauwkeurige afbeeldingen ("Natural history, or an extensive description of the animals, plants and minerals, after the compilation of Linnaeus, with accurate illustrations").

Houttuyn gave the species name as Madrepora natans, which was later included in the genus Colpophyllia, by Henri Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime, 1848.