Branching Coral

Nahema, voice log, go. This is a typical Protean coral, but it's not a typical *Earth* coral. Yeah, the gross morphology is a branching tree, like the extinct Acropora...but if you look inside, it gets weird.

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On Earth, coral are little jellyfish who build stone houses. On Proteus...it's more like they moved into an apartment block. A sponge. The coral polyps lived in the sponge's pores...they paid rent by cleaning and protecting the sponge. Eventually some sponges turned hard and rocky, like Earth's sclerosponges.

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If I'm right, we should see other coral-sponge pairs that have worked out different deals. Each deal suited to a particular ecological niche. The real question is....what is going on with these genetics?

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