What is the difference between mushrooms and corals?

superficially, mushrooms and corals have a lot in common. Both just sit underwater, filter food particles and live in large colonies that provide habitats for other animals. Divers know that they come in many beautiful colors. But under the surface, mushrooms and corals are completely different. Phyla is the most basic of all animals and refers to animals with completely different body plans. Mushrooms are among the simplest of all animals, lack real tissues and discourage predators primarily by their lack of nutrition and glass shards found in their bodies called Spikules. They are covered with small pores lined with cells equipped with a flagella used to circulate water through the sponge and absorb food particles. Mushrooms are able to live in the ocean at any time, from just outside the shore to 8,500 m (29,000 ft) deep or more. Mushrooms are members of Phylum Porifera and their alternative name is "poriferans".

Corals are Cnidarians related to jellyfish and anemone. More complicated than mushrooms have differentiated tissue and real intestine. Corals look like individuals, but in fact they are huge colonies composed of numerous genetically identical polyps with a diameter of a few millimeters. These polyps have stabbing tentacles, which is characteristic of Cnidarians. Instead of gaining most of their nutrition from symbiotic algae, depending on food particles, which gives them their color. Corals cannot live as deep as fungi, most of them occur in the Photic area, where light can reach their algae, but some species occur at 3000 m depths (9 842 ft).

mushrooms and corals are both members of very early lines that probably separated from other animals already 600 million years ago. For a very long time it thought that mushrooms were the most basic fungi and corals, but recent genetic studies indicated that the ancestors of coral, early CNIdarians, first separated from other animals and that mushrooms are probably from a line that was secondary.