Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
However, P. cylindrica relies primarily on asexual reproduction through fragmentation, with new corals growing and developing from pieces of coral broken off from a "parent" coral. Once settled on hard substrate, the polyps making up the broken coral grow and develop naturally and eventually mature into a coral colony that is genetically ...
Soft corals are able to produce both sexually and asexually. When a new polyp grows off an already existing polyp it is considered to be asexual reproduction. This process is referred to as budding. This reproduction method happens to be the most common among Chrysogorgia elegans. However, sexual reproduction also occurs in this species.
Callogorgia is a genus of deep sea corals that are ideally suited to be habitats for different organisms. They reproduce both sexually and asexually, clinging to the hard substrate of the ocean during their maturation process. Callogorgia are found at depths ranging from 750-8200 feet in the Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Anthozoans are exclusively marine, and include sea anemones, stony corals, soft corals, sea pens, sea fans and sea pansies. Anthozoa is the largest taxon of cnidarians; over six thousand solitary and colonial species have been described. They range in size from small individuals less than half a centimetre across to large colonies a metre or ...
Many soft corals are easily collected in the wild for the reef aquarium hobby, as small cuttings are less prone to infection or damage during shipping than stony corals. Nevertheless, home-grown specimens tend to be more adaptable to aquarium life and help conserve wild reefs.
A colony of leathery coral is stiff, hard and inflexible. It is composed of tiny polyps projecting from a shared leathery tissue. Members of the family may have two kinds of polyps; the autozooids have long trunks and eight tiny branched tentacles and project from the shared leathery tissue while the siphonozooids remain below the surface and pump water for the colony.
Primnoidae also lack the typical calcium carbonate skeleton that many shallow water corals possess, and many species of soft coral have no hard structural support at all. Other soft corals, such as those responsible for building seafloor habitats like Primnoa pacifica, contain a calcite and gorgonian skeletal structure, more flexible than ...
Like other soft corals, Alcyonium coralloides is a suspension feeder. The polyps spread their pinnate tentacles wide and passively gather zooplankton and organic particles from the water flowing past. [3] By colonising gorgonians, Alcyonium coralloides is raised above the surface of the substrate. This is advantageous to it as the water flow ...