Astrocoeniidae
Astrocoeniidae is a family of stony corals. The family is distributed across the tropical and subtropical oceans worldwide.Family Astrocoeniidae
Classification of Scleractinian (Stony) Corals. Retrieved 2011-12-23.

Description

Astrocoeniids include both hermatypic and ahermatypic ( reef-building) corals, both with and without symbiotic e. The family is made up of both branching an ...
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Scleractinia
Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton. The individual animals are known as polyp (zoology), polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mouth is fringed with tentacles. Although some species are solitary, most are Colony (biology), colonial. The founding polyp settles and starts to secrete calcium carbonate to protect its soft body. Solitary corals can be as much as across but in colonial species the polyps are usually only a few millimetres in diameter. These polyps reproduce asexually by budding, but remain attached to each other, forming a multi-polyp colony of cloning, clones with a common skeleton, which may be up to several metres in diameter or height according to species. The shape and appearance of each coral colony depends not only on the species, but also on its location, depth, the amount of water movement and other factors. Many shallow-water co ...
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