Porites australiensis is a massive to encrusting scleractinian coral (family Poritidae) found in shallow Indo-Pacific reef environments, forming dome-shaped or plating colonies with the densely packed, small corallites characteristic of the genus Porites. The genus Porites is one of the most ecologically important and speciose coral genera in the Indo-Pacific, forming the structural backbone of many reef systems and providing records of paleoclimate in its skeletal growth bands. Genomic data have been generated for this species and are available in public databases, enabling comparative studies of cnidarian evolution and ecology.