Abstract
ASSOCIATIONS of algae and marine invertebrates are common in coral reefs of tropical seas. According to Yonge1,2 the algal components of corals obtain carbon dioxide and nutrients from the associated animals; but just what advantages of pseudosymbiosis accrue for the individual animal body has not been clearly demonstrated. Odum and Odum3 have expressed the view that the algal-coelenterate complex of tropical coral reefs is “a highly integrated ecological unit (comparable to the algal-fungal complex of a lichen) which permits cyclic use and re-use of food and nutrients necessary for vigorous coral growth in tropical ‘desert’ waters having a very low plankton content”. New approaches to this problem of symbiosis have been developed recently by the growing of single-celled zooxanthellæ isolated in pure cultures from marine jelly fish and sea anemones, and demonstration that these are in reality motile dinoflagellates4. It has not been clearly shown whether these photosynthetic flagellates contribute food supplies to the animal polyps.
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References
Yonge, C. M., Nature, 128, 309 (1931).
Yonge, C. M., in Hedgpeth's “Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology”, 428 (Waverly, Baltimore, 1957).
Odum, H. T., and Odum, E. P., Ecological Monographs, 25, 291 (1955).
McLaughlan, J. J., and Zahl, P. A., Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med., 95, 115 (1957).
Richards, F. A., with Thompson, T. G., J. Mar. Res., 11, 156 (1952).
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BURKHOLDER, P., BURKHOLDER, L. & RIVERO, J. Chlorophyll a in some Corals and Marine Plants. Nature 183, 1338–1339 (1959). https://doi.org/10.1038/1831338b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1831338b0
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