Physiological and Molecular Adaptations to Symbiosis of Zooxanthellae and their Hosts

Only in the 18th century, when a medical doctor from Marseilles, Jean-André Peyssonnel, definitively identified the animal origin of the red coral, was the evolutionary position of the Cnidarians within the animals determined. Despite this, due of their animal-flower shape, the name zoophytes (a small composite organism with both animal and plant features) remained linked to them until the beginning of the twentieth century