Fire Corals

After looking at the different phylum from the Invertebrates Part 1 Vodcast, I was drawn to the phylum Cnidaria. One organism I found interesting was fire corals. Fire Corals are classified as Hydrozoa in the Cnidarian phylum. They use their long hairs that protrude from their skeleton to trap their prey and get their food from a symbiotic relationship with microscopic red algae called Zooxanthealle. Then they produce clusters of stinging cells that inflict the stings on human skin. I now know why when people go snorkeling and hit a coral reef, they get long lasting scars. Their polyps reproduce asexually, and are near microscopic size and mostly are embedded in the skeleton and are connected by minute canals.  These corals contain gastropores and dactylopores, that are visible on their smooth surface. Fire corals can reproduce asexually through fragmentation. However their brittle skins are easily to be broken during storms or by divers. This relates to learning about the phylum Cnidaria in the Invertebrates Vodcast, where we learned that Cnidria is classified by having specialized tissues. 

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