Do corals eat their slime?

Cory · Dec 28, 2016

Ive found a few sweet articles that talk about coral slime teeming with bacteria and other microscopics. I wonder do they injest their own slime as a food source?

Coral slime is a carbon source for bacteria, so why produce it that way if your not eating it or using it. Is it a protective barrier, or both.

One article i read said that montipora tissue necrosis or they called it something else was responsible for a specific bacteria causing it and transferring that bacteria to healthy monti caused the disease in like 50%. I wonder if a hydrogen peroxide dilute bath would stop it?

Mike_J · Dec 28, 2016

Great questions! I don't have answers

but I'd be really interested in reading these articles. If you can provide links to these articles, please do so. Thanks in advance!

Cory · Dec 28, 2016

Lol no problem here they are:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0027973

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0046717

Cory · Dec 28, 2016

I think i found my answer, and gives me understanding of how i brought my mintipora back to life by dosing vodka; it created bacterioplankton fog food source.

"
Bacteria as Coral Food

Given the importance of bacteria as a food source in marine ecosystems, it might not be surprising to learn that they are also a primary food source for corals. It has been found that bacteria alone can supply up to 100% of both the daily carbon and nitrogen requirements of corals. All corals studied consume dissolved organic material, bacteria, and detrital material. This is more than can be said for any other food source, including zooplankton and light.

Coral consume bacteria in a number of ways. First, they can use their mucus and well-developed epithelial cilia to entrap and consume both attached and pelagic bacteria. Some corals, such as Turbinaria species, can beat their mucus into webs with their cilia, and these webs are cast out like a net into the water column to ensnare particulate material, primarily bacteria. The cilia then pull the net backwards towards the colony where the polyps consume the bounty. The amount of nutrition gained by bacteriovory under normal conditions is unusually high in terms of efficiency of capture and ingestion, and studies show a range of average gains from such resources that depend on both the species and the environment (in terms of the availability of bacteria in the water column). Table 1 presents some data from Sorokin (1979, 1991)."