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Understanding Coral Ecosystems

This quiz assesses knowledge about coral ecosystems, their biological characteristics, and their ecological significance.

#Coral #Marine Biology #Ecology #Biodiversity #Ecosystems

1 Fossils of fellow reef-dwellers algae, sponges, and the remains of many echinoids, brachiopods, ________, gastropods, and trilobites appear along with coral fossils.

2 What phylum does Coral belong to?

3 ________ bamboo corals (Isididae) may be among the first organisms to display the effects of ocean acidification.

4 What classis does Coral belong to?

5 The polyps are multicellular organisms that feed on a variety of small organisms, from microscopic ________ to small fish.

6 Rugose corals became dominant by the middle of the Silurian period, and became extinct early in the ________ period.

7 Coral rag is an important local ________ in places such as the East African coast.

8 Synchronous spawning is very typical on a coral reef and often, even when multiple ________ are present, all the corals on the reef release gametes the same night.

9 The stomach closes at the base of the polyp, where the epithelium produces an ________ called the basal plate or calicle (L. small cup).

10 The sea anemone Aiptasia, while considered a pest among coral reef aquarium hobbyists, has served as a valuable ________ in the scientific study of cnidarian-algal symbiosis.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the magnitude of the 1833 Sumatra earthquake was calculated from the amount of uplift recorded by coral microatolls around the Mentawai islands.
  • the extinct coral Coelosimilia is the first known example of a scleractinian coral to have a skeleton not composed of the mineral aragonite.
  • the European fungus Ramaria formosa, found under beech trees, resembles a yellow-tipped pink piece of many-branched coral.
  • the earliest fossil reef formations that show high biodiversity, containing the earliest corals, form the mid-Ordovician Chazy Formation, reaching from Tennessee to Labrador.
  • the isolation of antibodies and flu viruses from birds on Tryon Island, a coral cay off the coast of Queensland, Australia, led to the development of antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu.
  • the antimicrobial protein hydramacin-1 was extracted and isolated in 2008 by German scientists from Hydra, a freshwater relative of corals and jellyfish.
  • a previously undescribed species of coral called Pocillopora sp. was found off the coast of Puerto Ángel, Mexico.
  • Bunaken National Park (pictured) in the north of Sulawesi island of Indonesia, located near the centre of the Coral Triangle, provides habitat to 390 coral species.
  • hypertrophied skeletons of the deep water coral Madrepora oculata (pictured) were thought to be signs of the first neoplasm to be discovered in coral, but are now reinterpreted as an internal gall.
  • yellow-band disease is a disease that attacks colonies of coral when the coral is under stress from pollution, overfishing, and climate change.
  • The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, Charles Darwin's first published theory, explains how coral atolls (example pictured) form.
  • a sea fan is a form of sessile colonial cnidarian, similar to a sea pen or a soft coral, found in tropical and subtropical seawater.
  • corals, graptolites, brachiopods and trilobites are frequently used as index fossils.
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