Having the bush-like branching appearance of a plant, madrepores are in fact animals with an outer skeleton, closely related to sea anemones. They belong to the phylum Cnidaria. Also called hard corals, they build the remarkable reefs of the tropics.
Whatever their shapes: branch-like, solid, encrusting, they are made of several thousand polyps (or exceptionally, only one). Each polyp looks like a sac, with a single opening surrounded by a crown of stinging tentacles. Endowed with this weapon, the coral can defend itself, but it also paralyzes small planktonic prey which is quickly digested inside the polyps stomach cavity.
Madrepores house within their tissues tiny, single-celled, organisms called Zooxanthellae. Photosynthetic, they use the energy of light to manufacture the nutritive components necessary for the life of their host. This is why tropical corals live near the surface, where light is plentiful.
This mutually beneficial association is a true symbiosis.
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