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The classification of corals has been discussed for millennia, owing to having similarities to both plants and animals. Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus described the red coral, korallion, in his book on stones, implying it was a mineral, but he described it as a deep-sea plant in his Enquiries on Plants, where he also mentions large stony plants that reveal bright flowers when under water in ...
Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton.The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mouth is fringed with tentacles.
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. [1] Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. Coral belongs to the class Anthozoa in the animal phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones and ...
In Australia, this coral often lives in symbiosis with the sipunculid worm, Aspidosiphon muelleri. [3] The worm often has an entrance hole on the oral disc through which it can extend its introvert to feed. Another hole in the base of the coral is used by the worm to move the coral about on the sandy seabed, preventing the coral from becoming ...
Several species of coral-inhabiting barnacles are associated with Astreopora. In fact, Hiroa stubbingsi and two species of Cionophorus seem to occur nowhere else. In the case of H. stubbingsi , which has a primitive wall and a relatively unspecialised operculum , this may be because it is not equipped to occupy other corals, but the Cionophorus ...
Piti Bomb Holes Marine Preserve is a marine protected area comprising all of Piti Bay on the western coast of Guam, located off of the village of Piti in the Philippine Sea. The defining "bomb hole" features, named because they look like bomb craters in the reef flat, are actually natural percolation pits where fresh water filters into the ...
The branch coral (Acropora florida) is a species of acroporid coral found in the southwest and northern Indian Ocean, the central Indo-Pacific, Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan and the East China Sea, Cook Islands and the oceanic west Pacific Ocean. It can be found in shallow reefs on the reef tops, walls and slopes to depths of 30 m.
Cryptochiridae is a family of crabs known commonly as gall crabs or coral gall crabs. They live inside dwellings in corals and cause the formation of galls in the coral structure. [1] [2] The family is currently placed in its own superfamily, Cryptochiroidea. Gall crabs are sexually dimorphic, with males being much smaller than females ...