Free Republic

A symbiotic relationship between two marine lifeforms has just been discovered thriving at the bottom of the ocean, after disappearing from the fossil record for hundreds of millions of years. Scientists have found non-skeletal corals growing from the stalks of marine animals known as crinoids, or sea lilies, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, off the coasts of Honshu and Shikoku in Japan. "These specimens represent the first detailed records and examinations of a recent syn vivo association of a crinoid (host) and a hexacoral (epibiont)," the researchers wrote in their paper, "and therefore analyses of these associations can...

Sorry, kids—scientists have not discovered the first known bubblegum-blowing sea creature. But they have found the only known corals to eat adult jellyfish, a new study says. Opening wide--yes, that's a mouth--a mushroom coral ingests a roughly 4-and-a-half-inch-wide (12-centimeter) moon jellyfish (pictured) in the Red Sea in March 2009. And this coral wasn't alone. The study, led by scientists from Israel's Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University, witnessed other corals dining on the jellyfish. Marine ecologist Jennifer Smith, who wasn't part of the study, agreed the find was unique, though she's "not entirely surprised." Mushroom corals, which have soft bodies,...

25 April 2007 Corals: More complex than you? The humble coral may possess as many genes – and possibly even more – than humans do. And remarkably, although it is very distant from humans in evolutionary terms, it has many of the immune system genes that protect people against disease. In fact, it is possible some of these were pioneered by corals. Corals are among the simplest animals in the world – yet they may possess a set of genes as large and complex as our own, says Professor David Miller of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef...