coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...

s, the coenosarc is the living tissue overlying the stony skeletal material of the coral. It secretes the coenosteum, the layer of skeletal material lying between the

corallite A corallite is the skeletal cup, formed by an individual stony coral polyp, in which the polyp sits and into which it can retract. The cup is composed of aragonite, a crystalline form of calcium carbonate, and is secreted by the polyp. Corallit ...

s (the stony cups in which the polyps sit). The coenosarc is composed of mesogloea between two thin layers of

epidermis The epidermis is the outermost of the three layers that comprise the skin, the inner layers being the dermis and Subcutaneous tissue, hypodermis. The epidermal layer provides a barrier to infection from environmental pathogens and regulates the ...

and is continuous with the body wall of the polyps. The coenosarc contains the gastrovascular canal system that links the polyps and allow them to share nutrients and symbiotic zooxanthellae.

References

Cnidarian anatomy {{Cnidarian-anatomy-stub