Abstract
Above it was mentioned that most scleractinian corals and more than half of the taxa of octocorals inhabiting coral reefs have algal symbionts in their tissues — the zooxanthellae. The endosymbiosis enables them to use solar energy. Simultaneously, coral polyps are able to feed as heterotrophs. The autotrophic and heterotrophic nutrition of corals and the relative importance of these sources in their energy balance have been recognized long ago as key problems of biology and ecology not only of the corals themselves but also of the coral reef ecosystems as a whole (Odum and Odum 1955, 1956).
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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Sorokin, Y.I. (1995). Nutrition of Corals. In: Coral Reef Ecology. Ecological Studies, vol 102. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80046-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80046-7_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60532-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-80046-7
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