A coral by and large is a colony of polyp animals that is attached to the reef – it sits there, grows onto the reef, sometimes it breaks off but it’s supposed to re-attach or at least stabilize itself. Not so with the endless Goni discovered rolling around Australia like a tumbleweed. Although some corals like boulder corals, disc corals, trachyphyllia and elegance corals may be “free-living” and unattached to the reef, they at least have the sense to have an ‘up’ side and a ‘down’ side.
好吧，无尽的戈尼，可能Goniopora stokesi花盆珊瑚didn’t get that memo. With skeleton and tissue totally and evenly covering the entire colony, this is one weird free living coral. The ‘endless Goni’ was named by its collectors at Salty Pets in Queensland Australia. The baseless coral was spotted ‘rolling around in the sand’ of what we presume to be a not so high energy environment.
People say that flowerpot corals are delicate, hard to keep alive and susceptible to succumbing to mechanical damage but as this endless goni shows,Goniopora珊瑚比我们想象的要坚硬。滚筒珊瑚并非闻所未闻，但通常是在更耐用的珊瑚物种中开发的。
Free living, rolling corals have been recorded at Ascension Island in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea withFavia,Oculina珊瑚记录了“滚草珊瑚”开发案例。而且不要忘记真正的酷red flowerpot balls that ORAalso grew.
