{"id":20599,"date":"2025-01-22T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T19:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20599"},"modified":"2025-01-22T19:26:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T19:26:55","slug":"these-corals-are-made-for-walking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20599","title":{"rendered":"These Corals Are Made for Walking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Corals come in a wide array of shapes, sizes and colors, and they build sprawling reefs that serve as refuges for vast amounts of biodiversity in the ocean. But they are not known for being fleet of foot.<\/p>\n

This is because out of the more than 6,000 species of coral known to science, most are colonial organisms \u2014 individual animals that make their homes next to and on top of one another. And as adults, these corals are immobile.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another, lesser-known and understudied kind of coral that\u2019s completely solitary. And some of these animals, known as mushroom corals, can walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very little,\u201d said Brett Lewis<\/a>, a marine ecologist and microscopist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. \u201cAnd they are adorable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Using time-lapse cameras and an aquarium that blocked out all other light, Mr. Lewis recently put inch-long mushroom corals through an experiment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018Periodic pulses\u2019 by the coral helped it move, but very, very slowly.<\/span>Lewis et al., 2025, PLOS One<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Corals come in a wide array of shapes, sizes and colors, and they build sprawling reefs that serve as refuges for vast amounts of biodiversity in the ocean. But they are not known for being fleet of foot.This is because out of the more than 6,000 species of coral known to science, most are colonial organisms \u2014 individual animals that make their homes next to and on top of one another. And as adults, these corals are immobile.But there\u2019s another, lesser-known and understudied kind of coral that\u2019s completely solitary. And some of these animals, known as mushroom corals, can walk.\u201cThey\u2019re very little,\u201d said Brett Lewis, a marine ecologist and microscopist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. \u201cAnd they are adorable.\u201dUsing time-lapse cameras and an aquarium that blocked out all other light, Mr. Lewis recently put inch-long mushroom corals through an experiment.\u2018Periodic pulses\u2019 by the coral helped it move, but very, very slowly.Lewis et al., 2025, PLOS OneWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20601,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20602,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20599\/revisions\/20602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}