The Environmental Biotechnology Lab

Coral reefs are diverse and important communities in tropical and subtropical marine environments. Hermatypic corals play a key role in forming the structure of coral reefs and in providing substrata and shelter for a wide variety of organisms. The symbiotic association between corals and their photosynthetic algae (zooxanthellae) is one of the primary keys to coral success in this ecosystem (Fallowski et al. 1984; Sebens 1994). Hermatypic corals attain a large part of their nutrition from photosynthetic products of the zooxanthellae, which are located in their gastrodermal cell layer. However, corals must utilize other particulate matter to gain enough nitrogen and phosphorus to grow (Sorokin 1990; Sebens 1994; Schlichter and Brendelberger 1998; Rosenfeld et al. 1999; Anthony and Fabricius 2000).