Page 29 - Caribbean Reef Life Demo

Corals form the building blocks of a reef ecosystem. They offer both food and shelter for the countless animals that call a reef home. Each coral is made up of a collection of tiny animal polyps, growing together in different shapes depending on their species. Each polyp has a central mouth for eating and expelling waste. Surrounding this is a ring of tentacles, which are armed with stinging cells called nematocysts, that can stun planktonic prey and move it into the mouth. Some are even able to capture and devour tiny sh. As a coral grows it lays down a thin skeleton of calcium carbonate as protection for its soft body. Decade after decade, as the colony continues to grow, this hard skeleton is repeatedly laid down on top of the others, until a coral reef is born.
Corals are some of the simplest and also the oldest forms of life on Earth. Some coral reefs alive today actually started growing over 50 million years ago. They are wildly diverse ecosystems. While coral reefs cover less than 1 of the ocean, they contain over 25 of all marine species.
Coral polyps themselves are actually translucent animals, closely related to the jelly sh. It is only the resident photosynthetic algae that give each species of coral its uni ue and vibrant colors.
68