News tagged with coral
DNA evidence shows that marine reserves help to sustain fisheries
Researchers reporting online on May 24 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology present the first evidence that areas closed to all fishing are helping to sustain valuable Australian fisheries. The intern ...
May 24, 2012 |
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Nuisance seaweed found to produce compounds with biomedical potential
A seaweed considered a threat to the healthy growth of coral reefs in Hawaii may possess the ability to produce substances that could one day treat human diseases, a new study led by scientists at Scripps ...
May 24, 2012 |
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Rapid coral death by a deadly chain reaction
(Phys.org) -- Most people are fascinated by the colorful and exotic coral reefs, which form habitats with probably the largest biodiversity. But human civilisation is the top danger to these fragile ecosystems ...
May 24, 2012 |
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Troubled freighter drifts toward Great Barrier Reef
A broken-down cargo ship was drifting towards the fringes of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Saturday, with fears of major damage if it were to run aground at the World Heritage-listed site.
May 19, 2012 |
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New models to predict coral bleaching
(Phys.org) -- Curtin University researchers have used computational fluid dynamics and powerful supercomputers to create new models for understanding and predicting coral bleaching.
May 17, 2012 |
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One-quarter of grouper species being fished to extinction
Groupers, a family of fishes often found in coral reefs and prized for their quality of flesh, are facing critical threats to their survival. As part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ...
May 09, 2012 |
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Weed-eating fish 'help protect jobs, livelihoods'
Jobs, livelihoods and ecotourism industries can benefit from having a diverse supply of weed-eating fish on the world's coral reefs, marine researchers say.
May 08, 2012 |
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Pacific islands may become refuge for corals in a warming climate, study finds
Scientists have predicted that ocean temperatures will rise in the equatorial Pacific by the end of the century, wreaking havoc on coral reef ecosystems. But a new study shows that climate change could cause ocean currents ...
Apr 29, 2012 |
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Study investigates aquatic parasites on fish
Researchers in the Czech Republic, Spain and the United Kingdom have successfully identified the cellular components and mechanisms that play a role in the proliferation of myxozoa, tiny aquatic parasites ...
Apr 23, 2012 |
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Ocean acidification changes the behaviour of baby coral
(Phys.org) -- Ocean acidification caused by human development can alter the behaviour of baby corals, a new study shows.
Apr 16, 2012 |
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Why is Great Barrier Reef 'not so great'
(Phys.org) -- Researchers at James Cook University have questioned why coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has continued to decline when it is recognised as “the best managed coral reef system in the world”.
Apr 13, 2012 |
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Under climate change, winners and losers on the coral reef
As ocean temperatures rise, some species of corals are likely to succeed at the expense of others, according to a report published online on April 12 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology that details the fi ...
Apr 12, 2012 |
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CO2 is messing with coral skeletons
(Phys.org) -- An international scientific team has carried out the world’s first analysis of the impact of ocean acidification on every gene in the coral genome, throwing new light on the likely fate of corals under ...
Apr 12, 2012 |
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Study shows adaptive capacity of reef corals to climate change may be widespread
A new study by scientists at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science suggests that many species of reef-building corals may be able to adapt to warming waters by relying ...
Apr 11, 2012 |
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Now Extra-Tropical Daphne, left flooding behind in Fuji on NASA satellite imagery
Tropical Storm Daphne has become an extra-tropical storm and is fading fast in the South Pacific Ocean, but not before making its mark on the Fuji Islands. NASA's TRMM satellite compiled rainfall data that ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Apr 04, 2012 |
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Coral
Alcyonaria Alcyonacea Helioporacea Zoantharia Antipatharia Corallimorpharia Scleractinia Zoanthidea See Anthozoa for details
Corals are marine organisms from the class Anthozoa and exist as small sea anemone-like polyps, typically in colonies of many identical individuals. The group includes the important reef builders that are found in tropical oceans, which secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.
A coral "head", commonly perceived to be a single organism, is formed from myriads of individual but genetically identical polyps, each polyp only a few millimeters in diameter. Over thousands of generations, the polyps lay down a skeleton that is characteristic of their species. An individual head of coral grows by asexual reproduction of the individual polyps. Corals also breed sexually by spawning, with corals of the same species releasing gametes simultaneously over a period of one to several nights around a full moon.
Although corals can catch small fish and animals such as plankton using stinging cells on their tentacles, these animals obtain most of their nutrients from photosynthetic unicellular algae called zooxanthellae. Consequently, most corals depend on sunlight and grow in clear and shallow water, typically at depths shallower than 60 m (200 ft). These corals can be major contributors to the physical structure of the coral reefs that develop in tropical and subtropical waters, such as the enormous Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Other corals do not have associated algae and can live in much deeper water, with the cold-water genus Lophelia surviving as deep as 3000 m. Examples of these can be found living on the Darwin Mounds located north-west of Cape Wrath, Scotland. Corals have also been found off the coast of Washington State and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
Corals coordinate behaviour by communicating with each other.
For more information about Coral, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
