What I Can DoDirections: Read the paragraph and answer the questions that follow...

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December 2021 1 2 Report

What I Can Do
Directions: Read the paragraph and answer the questions that follow. Write it in your Science journal.
Living things and non living things interact with each others in a coral reefs ecosystem. Coral reefs is composed of non living components such as water and sand. It serves as breeding place for fish, crustaceans, molluks, cnidarians, sponges, and echinoderms. Their interaction enables the survival of living thing and affects non living things. Can you identify the living and non living things in coral reefs ecosystem? Discuss their interaction.

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Answer:

SMITHSONIAN OCEAN

Corals, sponges, and algae are the major components of most coral reef communities as shown in this picture.Credit: Wolcott Henry

CORALS AND CORAL REEFS

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HOME OCEAN LIFE INVERTEBRATES CORALS AND CORAL REEFS

Introduction

by The Ocean Portal Team

Reviewed by Nancy Knowlton, Smithsonian NMNH

Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter. This is a remarkable statistic when you consider that reefs cover just a tiny fraction (less than one percent) of the earth’s surface and less than two percent of the ocean bottom. Because they are so diverse, coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea.

Coral reefs are also very important to people. The value of coral reefs has been estimated at 30 billion U.S. dollars and perhaps as much as 172 billion U.S. dollars each year, providing food, protection of shorelines, jobs based on tourism, and even medicines.

Unfortunately, people also pose the greatest threat to coral reefs. Overfishing and destructive fishing, pollution, warming, changing ocean chemistry, and invasive species are all taking a huge toll. In some places, reefs have been entirely destroyed, and in many places reefs today are a pale shadow of what they once were.

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jemimakeziahpu15 Corals consist of small, colonial, plankton-eating invertebrate animals called polyps, which are anemone-like. Although corals are mistaken for non-living things, they are live animals. Corals are considered living animals because they fit into the five criteria that define them (1. Multicellular; 2. Consumes other organisms for food; 3. Has an internal digestive system; and 4. Embryonic development; 5. Motile, or can move independently).

The islands of American Samoa are blessed.

jemimakeziahpu15 with an abundance of over 250 species of corals. Corals are animals like ourselves, although that they may not be readily apparent because many look like rocks, especially those washed up on the beach. In a sense, corals are indeed partly rock, because only the outer thin layer of the coral is inhabited by the coral animal itself. In that way, corals are like large trees – the

jemimakeziahpu15 inner part is hard and provides structural support, the outer part is the living, growing organism. And, like trees, most coral animals are permanently attached to one spot on the reef.

jemimakeziahpu15 The coral rubble that Samoans traditionally spread outside their houses, and the coral rocks along our beaches, are old, dead pieces that broke off the reef during storms and got tumbled around and tossed up on the beach.

jemimakeziahpu15 Coral reefs are complex structures built by coral organisms and algae that occur in shallow tropical waters. Living corals grow primarily on the outer reef flat and in deeper water.

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