What are 3 types of coral found on the reef?
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The three main types of coral reefs are fringing, barrier, and atoll. Schools of colorful pennantfish, pyramid, and milletseed butterflyfish live on an atoll reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
What is so special about coral reefs in the Arabian Gulf?
In the Arabian Gulf, situated in a hyper-arid area with relatively low biodiversity on land, the coral reefs of the region are the biological treasure chest housing most of the region’s biodiversity. In many areas, this biodiversity is considered key to finding new medicines for the 21st century.
What is coral reef system?
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups.
Are there coral reefs in UAE?
The UAE has coastlines along the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Gulf and ranks 38th in the world in terms of coral reef size (Spalding et al., 2001). It hosts large areas of coral reef assemblages of approximately 1,190 km2, the majority of which are located within Abu Dhabi waters (Spalding et al., 2001).
Which island is made of corals?
The Lakshadweep Islands union territory of India is a group of 39 coral Islands, along with some minor islets and banks. Some of the islands belonging to Kiribati are considered coral islands. The Maldives consist of coral islands.
What is the 2nd largest coral reef in the world?
The Belize Barrier Reef
The Belize Barrier Reef is a 300-kilometer (190 mi) long section of the 900-kilometer (560 mi) Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which is continuous from Cancún on the north-eastern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula through the Riviera Maya and down to Honduras, making it the second largest coral reef system in the world …
Which is the largest reef in the world?
the Great Barrier Reef
Stretching for 1,429 miles over an area of approximately 133,000 square miles , the Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world. The reef is located off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in the Coral Sea.
What is the relationship between corals and fish?
There are strong mutual dependencies between the reef-building corals and reef-inhabiting fishes, with many fish species depending on corals for food and habitat, while corals depend on the grazing by certain fishes for reproductive success. Even the spread of coral diseases may be mitigated by fishes.
What types of corals do corallivorous fishes target?
Most corallivorous fishes target , although a handful of species, such as the black-backed butterflyfish ( Chaetodon melannotus ), clearly prefer alcyonarian ‘soft’ corals; ( Cole et al. 2008 ).
What shapes coral reef communities across the GBR?
Fundamental variation of processes such as wave energy and sedimentation, also shape coral reef communities across the GBR and also partly explain the differences in the composition of benthic (substrate) communities across the continental shelf.
What are the three types of feeding in corallivorous fish?
There are three main feeding modes amongst corallivorous fishes: polyp-feeders, mucous-feeders and skeletal-feeders. Polyp-feeders use their forceps-like mouths to remove individual coral polyps, but do so without damaging the underlying coral skeleton (Cole et al.