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Yellow longnose butterflyfish browsing on coral polyps. A corallivore is an animal that feeds on coral. Corallivores are an important group of reef organism because they can influence coral abundance, distribution, and community structure. Corallivores feed on coral using a variety of unique adaptations and strategies.
Some planulae contain yolky material and others incorporate zooxanthellae, and these adaptations enable these larvae to sustain themselves and disperse more widely. [2] The planulae of the stony coral Pocillopora damicornis, for example, have lipid-rich yolks and remain viable for as long as 100 days before needing to settle. [23]
Fire coral has several common growth forms; these include branching, plate, and encrusting. Branching fire coral adopts a calcareous structure which branches off into rounded, finger-like tips. Plate-growing fire coral forms a shape similar to that of fellow cnidarian lettuce corals - erect, thin sheets, which group together to form a colony ...
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 ...
Brain coral is a common name given to various corals in the families Mussidae and Merulinidae, so called due to their generally spheroid shape and grooved surface which resembles a brain. Each head of coral is formed by a colony of genetically identical polyps which secrete a hard skeleton of calcium carbonate ; this makes them important coral ...
Coral reef fish are fish which live amongst or in close relation to coral reefs. ... As an example of the adaptations made by reef fish, ...
During the day when the polyp is closed, the coral is covered by a mantle that extends beyond the skeleton, but can retract when disturbed. [4] [5] Polyps and mantle are very fleshy. [4] Colonies can be blue, green, yellow, brown, and are often vibrantly colored. [4] [5] The open brain coral is known to host a species of gall crab, Lithoscaptus ...
Paragorgia arborea is a species of coral in the family Paragorgiidae, commonly known as the bubblegum coral because of its bulbous branch tips. It mainly grows in depths between 200 and 1,300 metres (700 and 4,300 ft) at temperatures between 3 and 8 °C (37 and 46 °F).