What are soft corals?
Soft corals are grouped in the phylum Cnidaria, class Anthozoa, and order Alcyonacea. Their distinguishing characteristic is that their polyps always bear eight tentacles which are on both edges fringed by rows of pinnules (Fabricius and Death, 2002). The common name soft coral comes from the fact that they have no massive external skeleton as compared to the more commonly studied hard corals. Even though soft corals and hard corals look closely related when you examine their taxonomic background, their genetic material tells a different story. From the examination of the basic genetic material of hard corals and soft corals it appears they last shared a common ancestor about 400 million years ago, plenty of time for major differences to develop (Shimek, 1998). As a comparison the common ancestors of both present day reptiles and mammals lived only 200 million years ago (Shimek, 1998). Soft corals are considered to be colonial animals, where the main body of the animal is often derived
