• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Thought Corals Were Stationary? Think Again – They’re Inflating And On The Move

January 22, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

Corals might appear stationary, but different species are capable of moving more than just their branches. In a new study, the mushroom coral Cycloseris cyclolites has been recorded navigating toward light, suggesting they’ve been underestimated until now. 

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

“Not all corals are attached to the substrate; some are solitary and free-living, allowing them to migrate into preferred habitats,” the study’s first author Dr Brett Lewis said in a statement. “However, the lifestyle of these mobile corals, including how they move and navigate for migration, remains largely obscure.”

C. cyclolites corals are typically small, with the largest measuring 9 centimeters (3.5 inches). The younger corals are typically known to start their lives attached to harder substrates but tend to move down into deeper water as they age. Free-living mushroom corals are thought to either be moved by the motion of the waves, hitchhiking on other moving animals, or actively moving through a process of inflating and deflating parts of their body.

The researchers were also interested in the response of corals to different light stimuli. In the deeper ocean, blue light wavelengths are more prevalent, so the team wanted to compare the movement of the corals in response to blue and white light to see which, if either, they favored. 

The researchers created aquariums covered in blackout housing so they could accurately access the response of the coral to a single light source. The team set up time-lapse cameras to record which directions the coral moved over 24 hours. The experiment consisted of 16 trials: six with white light, seven with blue light, and three trials where both blue and white light were presented. The distance traveled by the coral was recorded by measuring where the coral’s mouth was at the start and end of the experiment. 



During the experiments, 86.7 percent of the corals were found to move toward blue light, while only 13.3 percent of the corals moved toward white light. The corals did not move continuously, but rather via a period of pulses followed by a period of rest. During the trial with blue and white light combined, all the corals moved towards the blue light and away from the white light. 

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

The tissues at the bottom of the corals inflated, creating lift. They also increased their surface area further by using their ventral foot, and manipulated their tissues using contraction and twisting motion to propel themselves. This creates what the team calls “coordinated pulsed inflation locomotion”, similar to a jumping motion. After the jumps, the corals deflated back to their typical size. The team also noted that the inflated coral is also passively moved by the water flow, though not in the direction of the lights.

This new information about how these corals move and their preference for blue light could help scientists working to restore coral reefs damaged by bleaching and climate change. 

“Understanding their movement strategies could help scientists predict how migratory corals might resist, survive or adapt to changes in environmental conditions such as sea surface changes caused by climate change, which can be reduced by the deeper waters these corals migrate to,” explained Dr Lewis. “With these climate-driven factors increasing, the faster the migration, the higher the chance of survival.”

The paper is published in the journal PLOS One.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China’s elite snowboarders herald new wave of Olympians
  2. Philippines to investigate 154 police over deadly drugs war
  3. Puffins’ Fighting Side Gets Airtime In David Attenborough’s First UK Nature Series
  4. The Unlikely Coexistence Of Spaceships And Wild Nature Around The World

Source Link: Thought Corals Were Stationary? Think Again – They’re Inflating And On The Move

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Did You Know The World’s Largest Waterfall Is Underwater?
  • Video Game Study Found Out What People Do When The World Ends, And It’s Exactly What You’d Expect
  • How Do We Predict The Weather? Find Out More In Issue 40 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • You Should Never Leave These Foods In Your Fridge Door (But We Bet You Do)
  • These Gullies On Mars Look Carved – We Might Finally Know What Created Them
  • Potential Environmental Trigger For Autism Identified, 3I/ATLAS’s Tail Appears To Have Changed Direction, And Much More This Week
  • Spaghetti Has Inner Secrets We’re Only Just Learning About
  • How Far Back In Time Could You Go And Still Understand English?
  • We Now Know How The First People Reached America – And It Wasn’t On Foot
  • Two Major Coral Species Now Functionally Extinct In Florida Keys, After Record-Breaking Marine Heatwave
  • A “Super-Earth” In The Habitable Zone Is Half The Distance To Comparable Worlds
  • Adorable But Critically Endangered Bornean Orangutan Born In Conservation Success
  • How Did The FDA Settle On The “2,000 Calories Per Day” Guideline?
  • Comet 3I/ATLAS Losing At Least Two Kangaroos’ Worth Of Dust Every Second
  • Mummified Dinosaur Duo Prove They Had Hooves, Marking “The First Confirmed Hooved Reptile”
  • What Do The Numbers On Your Toaster Really Mean?
  • NASA Vs. Elon Musk: Is A Moon Landing This Decade Off The Cards?
  • Scientists Explored Some Of The Deepest Parts Of The Ocean And Spotted Some Seriously Weird Deep-Sea Creatures
  • 500-Meter-Tall Megatsunami Struck Remote Alaskan Fjord After Massive Landslide
  • 3I/ATLAS, CKM Syndrome, And Mosquitoes’ Final Frontier
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version