CraigBILL

Around the world, coral reef environments such as in the Cayman Islands,  represent some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth.  In the early 1950's, scientists were baffled by how the Suns energy moved through the system as it so obviously does in places such as rain forests.  The light from the Sun is soaked up though the autotrophs - or plants, then digested by other animals that ate those animals resulting in the flow of sunlight energy to animals that could not directly obtain energy from sunlight (photosynthesis).  In coral reefs, in was discovered that the majority of coral creatures symbiotically contained Zooxanthellae or algae inside their tissue.  This relationship enabled the photosynthesis by the algae to take place in the protective skin of the corals, and in turn the algae gave the coral food from their photosynthesis productivity.  Sometimes Earth is more alien then we think - In the coral reef ecosystems, the rain forests are INSIDE the animals, not outside!

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