GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Corals get their food from algae living in their tissues or by capturing and digesting prey. Most reef-building corals have a unique partnership with tiny algae called zooxanthellae . The algae live within the coral polyps, using sunlight to make sugar for energy.

Detailed explanation-2: -Corals do not make their own food. Instead, they receive the byproducts of photosynthesis from the zooxanthellae. In fact, up to 95% of these byproducts (Falkowski et al. 1984) are transferred from the algae to the coral.

Detailed explanation-3: -It reduces the space available for larval corals to settle and recolonise the reef, and algae also abrade living coral, causing their growth to slow down, and sometimes direct overgrowth and death.

Detailed explanation-4: -"Tropical corals cannot survive without the Symbiodinium algae that live inside them. These tiny, photosynthetic organisms can provide the corals with more than 90 percent of their food, ” explains lead researcher Rachel Levin.

Detailed explanation-5: -Corals are animals, though, because they do not make their own food, as plants do. Corals have tiny, tentacle-like arms that they use to capture their food from the water and sweep into their inscrutable mouths.