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iNat·47532OrderAnimalia251,228 field observations
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Stony Corals
Plate 1 of 9. (c) Damien Brouste, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Damien Brouste · via iNaturalist

Stony Corals

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 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 colonial. The founding polyp settles and starts to secrete calcium carbonate to protect its soft body. Solitary corals can be as much as...

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Recorded sightings

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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.

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Every page naming Scleractinia in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →

This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 47532.