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Alcyoniidae
Sign in to saveAlcyoniidae is a family of leathery or soft corals in the phylum Cnidaria.
Species
alcyoniids
FAMILY
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumCnidaria
- ClassAnthozoa
- OrderMalacalcyonacea
- FamilyAlcyoniidae
via GBIF
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 174
- With media
- 34
- Family
- Alcyoniidae
- Collections
- USNM, CAS, YPM, QM
- Recorded in
- Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, United States, Canada, Heard Island And Mcdonald Islands, Malaysia, Australia
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Description
- Distribution and habitat
- Biology
- Genera
- See also
- References
Alcyoniidae is a family of leathery or soft corals in the phylum Cnidaria.
==Description== A colony of leathery coral is stiff, hard and inflexible. It is composed of tiny polyps projecting from a shared leathery tissue. Members of the family may have two kinds of polyps; the autozooids have long trunks and eight tiny branched tentacles and project from the shared leathery tissue while the siphonozooids remain below the surface and pump water for the colony. They appear as tiny hollows or mounds among the taller autozooids. Different genera have different proportions of these two kinds of polyps. The autozooids only emerge when the colony is fully submerged.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Alcyoniidae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.