#zooxanthellae

𝙿𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚜𝚎

𝚃𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚊𝚗 𝚍𝚠𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚛𝚜

𝚂𝚘 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎

𝚃𝚘 𝚔𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚒𝚛 𝚌𝚘𝚘𝚕

𝙿𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚜𝚎

𝚃𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚋𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚖 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚜, 𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜

𝙱𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚍-𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚕𝚜

~Lina

Coral reefs display a comparable knack for waste management. Corals live in a symbiotic alliance with a tiny algae called zooxanthellae. Thanks to photosynthesis, the algae capture sunlight and use it to turn carbon dioxide into organic carbon, with oxygen as a waste product of the process. The coral then uses the oxygen in its own metabolic cycle. Because we're aerobic creatures ourselves, we tend not to think of oxygen as a waste product, but from the point of view of the algae, that's precisely what it is: a useless substance discharged as part of its metabolic cycle. The coral itself produces waste in the form of carbon dioxide, nitrates, and phosphates, all of which help the algae to grow. That tight waste-recycling chain is one of the primary reasons coral reefs are able to support such a dense and diverse population of creatures, despite residing in tropical waters, which are generally nutrient-poor. They are the cities of the sea.

humbly subtitled Zoox’s First Day Out, for @taznovembercelebration

In the beginning, Zoox opened his eyes. And the world was gold and syrupy, and suffocating. In the first scant moments of Brinarr birth, Zoox thrashed within the golden liquid that had animated his coral form, propelled by twitch nerve panic and jets of bubbles shooting from his feet. The surface of the birthing pool pulled and split apart as he rose up, breaching the surface and catching the side. The world now was white and cold, and sterile. He clutched the side of the pool, feeling out for the first time the extent of his body. Legs, body, and coral arms. No eyes, no mouth, and an odd stirring of power within him. Like the currents of the ocean itself swirling.

Above him, a figure appears and reaches down to help him out. The hand that grabs him is coral, as he is, and it pulls him up with surety and experience. Zoox, bewildered, grounds himself against it, and looks at who is holding him.

Zoox doesn’t know how tall is tall, but he knows this figure is taller. He doesn’t know what wisdom is, but he knows this figure is wiser. He doesn’t feel the need for a mother or father, but is pulled to trust this figure implicitly. It is a moment of pure, wondrous safety.

Zoox feels coral on his coral and hands on his hands. He looks up into the face of the figure, and though it cannot smile, it speaks as though it is. It says,

“Welcome to the Ethersea.”

Later, when Zoox has drained himself of the remaining golden fluid and introduced himself properly to Tesselation — when he’s started actually calling himself Zoox — he sits silently in front of a bay window in the side of the Coral Spire Lab. Outside, he can see schools of fish following the same swirling pattern of the ocean he feels within himself. Nearly silently, a door opens behind him. Tesselation stands in the doorway and watches him.

“Zoox, how are you feeling?”

“Hmm? Oh, good, Tessie. Say, you don’t mind if I call you Tessie, do you?”

Tesselation’s coral rubs against itself in thought. Zoox hears it.

“I would rather you call me Tesselation, thank you very much.”

“Alright, then.”

“Zoox, do you feel ready to enter the city yet?”

“Do I feel ready? I feel excited! I haven’t been alive for very long, Tessie — sorry, Tesselation, but I feel like I have already seen some incredible things. That golden pool was incredible — what was that? And these fish outside the window, swimming around like some … pattern thingy. Even you, Tesselation! You fill me with wonder. It makes me think about all the other wonders out there to see and experience. Wonders I won’t get to see if I don’t go out into the city. So yes, I think I’m ready.”

Tesselation’s voice takes on that quality again — as if their six souls are smiling in lieu of their mouth.

“Excellent, Zoox. If I may say before you go; you bring me hope for the Brinarr. Recently, it’s become harder to safely usher the souls of our dead into the coral bodies we have waiting for them. But seeing one such as you emerge from the tanks … someone so bright and cheery and full of life? It brings me joy. I hope you will come back to visit us soon.”

The currents in Zoox smiled back.

DEEPEST photosynthetic scleractinian coral found at 172 m (564 feet), deeper than the commonly used 150 m boundary set for mesophotic reefs! These corals were found to have associated Symbiodiniaceae. Very important discovery!

———

For some corals, going bright may be part of their fight against bleaching.

Beneficial algae normally dwell within the cells of most reef-building corals. These algae help feed the corals and give them their color. But higher-than-normal ocean temperatures can cause some corals to bleach. This means they lose those helpful algae. Affected corals can become bone white and may struggle to survive. But when they bleach, some corals turn neon hues from red to blue to purple.

Those flashy colors may help corals win back their lost algal partners, a new study finds. And this can help the corals recover from bleaching, it says.

“It’s visually very striking, but … there was surprisingly little information” on how and why colorful bleaching happens, says Elena Bollati. She’s a marine biologist at the National University of Singapore. She was on the research team, taking part while at the University of Southampton in England.

Some researchers suspected that with the algae gone, the natural colors of bleached corals shone through. The new work suggests something different. Some wavelengths of light appear to trigger the corals to make more of certain pigments. These may act as a sunscreen and create a more comfortable home for the returning algae. Bollati and her colleagues shared their findings May 21 in Current Biology.

The research “shows that some of these corals are trying to protect themselves with really spectacular side effects,” says Daniel Wangpraseurt. He was not involved with the study. A coral reef scientist, he works in England at the University of Cambridge.

-- hard corals

-- reef-building corals

-- coral polyps always live in colonies

-- always include zooxanthellae

-- colonies begin when a planktonic coral larvae settles on something hard

-- larvae goes through metamorphosis to become a coral polyp

-- if the original polyp survives and does well, it reproduces asexually       -- budding

-- usually all polyps in a coral colony are genetically identical to the founder polyp