Among the myriad creatures that populate our ocean, some stand out as having an outsized impact on the marine environment—shaping and maintaining habitats that themselves sustain countless other forms ...

Beneath the soft bodies of scleractinian, or stony corals, polyps secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton, and it is this skeleton that becomes the foundation of coral reef ecosystems. Coral colonies ...

Marine heat waves, sea level rise and ocean acidification — consequences of climate change — threaten coral animals, their calcium carbonate structures and the ecosystems they anchor. If scientists ...

Objects and Ideograms has developed a method to 3D-print calcium carbonate, which can be used as a scaffold for the growth of coral polyps and other aquatic life. Coral carbonate utilises its ...

This makes calcium carbonate less available in the ocean ... while ocean acidification in some instances does not reduce overall coral cover on a reef, the structures are less branched and ...

A research team has shown that methanogens, micro-organisms ubiquitous in low-oxygen environments like aquifers, soil and even permafrost, can propel their growth by dissolving calcium carbonate ...

Coral reefs are made up of colonies of hundreds to thousands of tiny individual corals, called polyps. These marine invertebrate animals have hard exoskeletons made of calcium carbonate, and are ...

Though it often looks like colourful rock, coral is actually made of colonies of marine animals related to sea anemones, that secrete a hard exoskeleton around themselves as they grow. Its exoskeleton ...

Coral bleaching occurs when corals lose their algae, exposing their white calcium carbonate skeletons. Corals helped Darwin refine his ideas about evolution. His first scientific book after ...

Corals—marine invertebrates with calcium-carbonate exoskeletons—are some ... up to half a billion people worldwide rely on coral reefs for food security and tourist income.