Marine Corals: Corals are marine organisms from the class Anthozoa and exist as small sea anemone–like polyps, typically in colonies of many identical individuals.
Marine Corals: Corals are marine organisms from the class Anthozoa and exist as small sea anemone–like polyps, typically in colonies of many identical individuals.
Coral is actually a living thing and not a plant or rock, a coral is made up of tiny animals called coral polyps.
When people think of Coral, they are normally meaning these animals, and the skeletons they create when they grow in groups.
There are hundreds of different species of Coral, but they are mainly classed as Hard Coral and Soft Coral.
Ranging in size from no bigger than a pinhead up to a foot in diameter, the coral polyp is an invertebrate (spineless animal).
Coral polyps group together through asexuall reproduction to produce mounds or branches (Coral Heads) each coral branch or mound can be covered by thousands of coral polyps. These mounds when grouped together are known as a coral colony.
A coral polyp is basically a sack with a stomach and a mouth. The mouth is surrounded by retractable stinging tentacles called cnidae, that are used to catch food.At night polyps' eat by catching tiny floating animals known as zooplankton. Using their long stinging tentacles to capture the zooplankton that are floating by, the polyps' put the plankton into their mouths to be digested in their stomachs.
Polyps' have a symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae (pronounced zo-zan-thel-ee) these single celled organisms live inside the corallite, using the sun to produce food via photosynthesis. The zooxanthellae provide the polyps with oxygen and over 90% of their nutritional needs, whilst the polyp provides carbon dioxide and waste nutrients to the algae, as well as a protective home.
It is this algae that gives coral its bright colours, the pigment in the algae can be many colours and can be seen through the transparent body of the polyp.