Octocorallia

Octocorallia, along with Hexacorallia, is one of the two extant classes of Anthozoa. It comprises over 3,000 species of marine and brackish animals consisting of colonial polyps with eight-fold symmetry, commonly referred to informally as "soft corals". It was previously known by the now-unaccepted scientific names Alcyonacea and Gorgonacea, both deprecated , and by the also deprecated name of Alcyonaria, in earlier times.

order of cnidarians

Alcyonacea (synonyms: Alcyonaria, Alcyonarida), in English soft corals or alcyonacians, is a former order (or suborder) of Octocorallia. Since a 2022 revision of Octocorallia, the content of Alcyonacea has been included in the order Malacalcyonacea and, to a lesser extent, in the order Scleralcyonacea, these two new orders now making up the order Octocorallia.

REDIRECT Octocorallia

Helioporacea is an order of the subclass Octocorallia that forms massive lobed crystalline calcareous skeletons in colonial corals. These corals first appeared in the Cretaceous period. It consists of two families, Helioporidae Moseley, 1876 and Lithotelestidae Bayer & Muzik, 1977.

Isididae is a family of octocorals belonging to the order Malacalcyonacea and formerly to the order Calcaxonia. Currently, the family only includes the genera Isis, Hicksonella and Rumphella.

The suborder Alcyoniina (in some systems classified as the order Alcyonacea in the narrowest sense) is a former octocoralian taxon belonging to the broadly conceived order Alcyonacea.

Malacalcyonacea is an order of soft corals in the class Octocorallia.