Marine Biology: A Very Short Introduction by Philip V. Mladenov

Author:Philip V. Mladenov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2013-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

21. Distribution of coral reefs

One of the remarkable attributes of reef-building corals is that, although they are animals, functionally they perform in many ways like plants, which explains why they only flourish in well-lit environments. This is because all reef-building corals have entered into an intimate relationship with plant cells. The tissues lining the inside of the tentacles and stomach cavity of the polyps are packed with photosynthetic cells called zooxanthellae, which are photosynthetic dinoflagellates, a group of unicellular organisms generally found free-living in seawater (see Figure 22). One square centimetre of coral tissue can contain several million zooxanthellae cells.

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