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In the past, soft corals were thought to be unable to lay new foundations for future corals, but recent findings suggest that colonies of the leather-coral genus Sinularia are able to cement sclerites and consolidate them at their base into alcyonarian spiculite, [10] thus making them reef builders.
Octocorallia (also known as Alcyonaria) is a class of Anthozoa comprising over 3,000 species [1] of marine organisms formed of colonial polyps with 8-fold symmetry. It includes the blue coral, soft corals, sea pens, and gorgonians (sea fans and sea whips) within three orders: Alcyonacea, Helioporacea, and Pennatulacea. [2]
Litophyton arboreum, also known as broccoli coral, is a common soft coral found from the Red Sea to the Western Pacific. It grows up to 80 cm, usually on seaward reef slopes or hard bottoms. The color of L. arboreum varies from pale olive-green to yellow or grey. L. arboreum are anthozoans in the order Alcyonacea in the family Nephtheidae.
Sinularia is a genus of soft coral in the family Alcyoniidae. They are commonly known as leather corals and currently have 166 described species in the genus.
Dendronephthya is a genus of soft corals in the family Nephtheidae. [2] There are over 250 described species in this genus. They are sometimes kept in aquariums, but are notoriously difficult to keep, requiring a near constant supply of small foods such as phytoplankton.
Gorgoniidae is a family of soft corals, a member of the subclass Octocorallia in the phylum Cnidaria. Nearly all the genera and species are native to the east and west coasts of America. Nearly all the genera and species are native to the east and west coasts of America.
Purple soft corals grow in small colonies of up to 3 cm in height. The diameter of the individual polyps is 0.4 cm. They are usually bright purple, although they may be yellow, pink, red, dark grey or orange. The soft colony is encrusting and variably shaped. Feeding polyps extend eight tentacles into the water column. [3]
This soft coral was first described in 1766 by the Russian naturalist Peter Simon Pallas who named it Parerythropodium coralloides.It was later determined on the basis of its growth forms, the nature of its spicules (small skeletal elements) and the passages in its coenenchyme (the tissue uniting the polyps) that it should be included in the genus Alcyonium and it was renamed Alcyonium ...