Duygu Sevilgen uses extremely small sensors to record the fine details of coral skeletons and listen to their dialogue with ...

A coral colony is a group of coral polyps — small, soft invertebrate — that live and grow together. The "mega" colony is made up of nearly one billion polyps, according to National Geographic.

Physicists and marine biologists built a quantitative framework that predicts how coral polyps collectively construct a ...

The larva grows into a coral polyp, then a colony that matures and releases larvae that colonize other rocks. In time, it helps to create one of nature’s most spectacular ecosystems: a coral reef.

13. #2009 Pachyphyllum: Most rugose corals were solitary, but a few grew in colonies. 14. #1416, 62 & 1405, species of Favosites: These specimens show the structure of a tabulate colony. Notice the ...

Although each tiny polyp builds only its own tiny limestone cup (a corallite) around itself, the numerous polyps of the coral colony cement their individual limestone cups together into a larger ...

Coral polyps, the reef's building blocks ... As one house tops another, the colony expands like a city; other marine life quickly grabs on and spreads, helping cement all the pieces together.

Each individual coral is a fragile ecosystem — a colony made up of thousands of tiny organisms called polyps. A coral reef is a teeming metropolis of mini-ecosystems built up over thousands of ...

Now, to keep Florida’s reef alive, scientists have to breed corals almost entirely in labs on land, where the water is clean and comfortably warm. Margaret Miller, a coral reproductive biologist, says ...