Table Coral (14”x13”)

The ivory bush coral is a true stony coral that lives on both shallow and deep coral reefs. Like all corals, this species is closely related to anemones, jellyfishes, and other animals in the Phylum Cnidaria. As this species is known to occur in both shallow and deep waters, different populations utilize different means of obtaining food resources. Shallow-water populations are known to have symbiotic algae living within their cells, providing the corals with excess energy that they make via photosynthesis (the use of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into food/energy). Nearly all species of shallow-water corals and several other groups of reef invertebrates have symbiotic relationships with these algae. On deep reefs, however, there is not sufficient sunlight to undergo photosynthesis, so ivory bush corals there instead obtain all of their energy by filter feeding individual plankton from the water that flows along deep-sea currents. Wherever it lives, the ivory bush coral bu