Coral Reef

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Coral Reef!!
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• Two basic types of Coral reef
• Stony (Hard) coral
• Soft coral

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Hard Coral

• Brain Coral
• Staghorn Coral
• Elkhorn Coral
• Star Coral

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Hard Coral

• Made up of Calcium Carbonate
• Forms massive structures

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Soft Coral

• Sea Fan coral
• Sea Whip coral
• Sea Plume coral

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Soft Coral

• Made of fibrous protein
• Gives them flexibility
• Looks more like a plant than an organism

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The Coral Animal

• Basic structure is the coral polyp
• Resembles a small sea anemone
• Often microscopic
• Very similar in form AND function of Sea anemone
• Ingestion
• Digestion
• Sensitivity
• Gas exchange, etc
• Colonial animal
• Live together in a colony, separated only by a
  thin membrane which connects the polyps
  digestive systems

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The coral polyp
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Limestone Skeleton
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Building the Skeleton

• Building the skeleton requires lots of energy
• Gets energy from plankton that it traps
• Food from zooxanthellae
• Symbiotic algae
• Have shelter while providing food
• Coral get oxygen (byproduct of photosynthesis)

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Building the Skeleton (cont.)

• Coral skeletons are made of limestone (CaCO3)
  same material that makes mollusk shells
• Coral must have a source of both calcium and CO2
• Cells within the polyp absorb Calcium from the
  seawater
• Zooxanthellae collect the CO2 produced during the
  polyps respiration (breathing)
• These two reactants combine in the tissue of the
  polyp and the skeleton is formed

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Facts

• Coral reefs occupy 1 of Earths surface but are
  home to some 4000 species of fish, 700 species of
  coral and thousands of other animals and plants.
• Corals grow between 5 and 200 millimetres per
  year and the large, massive corals are the
  slowest
• Corals avoid predation by feeding at night, most
  of their food however comes from the zooxanthellae

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Coral Reproduction

• Both Sexual and Asexual
• Asexual by fragmentation
• A piece of broken coral lands on a suitable
  substrate and begins to form a new colony
• Expand in size by budding
• Sexually,many corals mass spawn
• All the sperm and eggs are released, fertilize,
  form a planula, settle and start a new colony
• Some species brood their larvae before releasing
  it!

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Tropical Water

• The warm tropical water is often clear
• This represents not a lot of phytoplankton
• Warm water isnt very nutrient rich (without
  upwelling)
• Not a terrible amount of life in tropical
  waterExcept around corals

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Reef Formation
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First step is a fringing reef

• Coral needs a warm, sunny, environment that wont
  change
• A new tropical island is a perfect spot to attach

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Next step is Barrier reef

• The Island starts to erode away
• Coral still grows, it doesnt erode quite as
  quickly
• A lagoon forms between the land and the open
  ocean
• with the reef
• being the
• barrier.

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An Atoll

• An atoll forms when the much alive Reef continues
  to grow upward, but the island sinks away
• Forms one large lagoon in the center

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The End