Coral Colony Budding: Branching Morphogenesis

A coral colony grows one polyp at a time. Each polyp periodically buds off a genetically identical daughter that stays fused to the shared living tissue, and the direction of every new bud is steered by light-seeking (phototropism), ambient water current, and repulsion from crowded neighbours. This simulation builds a coral colony from a single founding polyp using exactly that local budding rule, in real time and in 3D. Tune the budding rate, phototropism strength, crowding-avoidance radius and current direction to watch the same mechanism produce either an open, upward-racing branching colony or a dense, flattened encrusting mass — the two dominant coral growth forms seen on real reefs — while live readouts track polyp count, colony height and the branching ratio.