Among the myriad creatures that populate our ocean, some stand out as having an outsized impact on the marine environment—shaping and maintaining habitats that themselves sustain countless other forms ...

The coral, a communal organism comprising millions of animals called polyps, is 34 meters wide and 32 meters long — and so large it can be seen from space. A typical coral reef is made of many ...

Beneath the soft bodies of scleractinian, or stony corals, polyps secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton, and it is this skeleton that becomes the foundation of coral reef ecosystems. Coral colonies ...

Time-lapse video shows how a mushroom coral polyp pulses and inflates, flinging its soft body into micro-hops to slowly move itself to a new location.

Rising acidity reduces the rate at which reefs develop. Crucial to coral health are colorful algae called zooxanthellae. These algae live in coral polyps, providing coral with its bright color.

Polyps collectively bulge, branch ... “It can guide your hypotheses for what you might see in the real world.” Coral reefs have been around for millions of years, and many of today’s living reefs are ...

Corals are living colonies of tiny tube-like animals called polyps - the individuals of some species are just 3mm long. Each polyp has a mouth surrounded by tentacles, usually arranged with six-fold ...

In the reef-building "hard corals", the polyps sit in a carbonate coral skeleton, which over time builds the fabric of the reef. Coral reefs are like cities under the sea. The structure of the ...

Those polyps clone themselves over and over again, eventually forming larger coral colonies that build reefs. That’s how typical reef-building corals, like the iconic elkhorn and staghorn ...

Coral reefs are made up of colonies of hundreds to thousands of tiny individual corals, called polyps. These marine invertebrate animals have hard exoskeletons made of calcium carbonate, and are ...

Without healthy coral reefs, the islands wouldn’t even exist ... Sometimes as small as a pencil tip, polyps make up the coral ...

Our Planet, the incredible new documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough, explores the beauty of life on Earth and highlights the threats that we pose to it. In the coastal seas episode, ...