The common skeletal structure or hard framework shared by all the individual animals in a colonial organism, such as in corals or bryozoans.
From Greek koinos (common) + osteon (bone), directly meaning 'common bone,' used in marine biology to describe the unified skeleton of colonial animals.
A coral reef is built from countless coenostea (plural)—each coral colony has one shared skeleton that grows as the polyps add to it, creating structures that can last thousands of years.
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