Heteroxenia
| Heteroxenia | ||||||||||||
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Heteroxenia |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Heteroxenia | ||||||||||||
| Kölliker , 1874 |
Heteroxenia is a genus of octocorals from the coral reefs of the tropical Indo-Pacific and the Red Sea .
features
They are animal colonies that consist of many individual polyps . Heteroxenia species have a soft, unbranched, short stem that is very slimy due to secretions, at the upper end of which there are dimorphic polyps. One type of polyp is the "autozooid", which has eight feathered tentacles and carries out characteristic pumping movements up to 40 times per minute, which are not used to catch plankton, but probably for breathing. There are also tentacle-free "siphozooids", tubular polyps that are smaller than the autozooids and take over the pumping in and out of the water so that the colony can be stabilized by the internal water pressure.
The sclerites of Straight Xenia have the form of tiny leaves. The color is brown to beige.
All Heteroxenia species live in a symbiosis with unicellular, symbiotic algae ( zooxanthellae ) from which they obtain most of the nutrients they need. They also absorb organic substances from the surrounding water through the skin.
Heteroxenia species are rarer than the species of the closely related genus Xenia .
literature
- Harry Erhardt / Horst Moosleitner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 2 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1997, ISBN 3-88244-112-7
- Harry Erhardt / Hans A. Baensch : Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 5 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 2000, ISBN 3-88244-115-1
- Julian Sprung: Korallen , Dähne Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-92168-487-0
- Svein A. Fosså / Alf Jacob Nilsen: Coral reef aquarium. Volume 4, Birgit Schmettkamp Verlag, ISBN 3-928819-05-4
