Bryozoa
Bryozoa
EOL Text
bryozoa preys on:
plankton
detritus
Based on studies in:
USA: Alaska, Torch Bay (Littoral, Rocky shore)
This list may not be complete but is based on published studies.
- R. T. Paine, Food webs: linkage, interaction strength and community infrastructure, J. Anim. Ecol. 49:667-685, from p. 670 (1980).
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Rights holder/Author | Cynthia Sims Parr, Joel Sachs, SPIRE |
Source | http://spire.umbc.edu/fwc/ |
The fertilized egges in some bryozoans in the class Stenolaemata divide so that up to one hundred identical eggs are brooded at a time in specialized zooids. There is great diversity in the types of bryozoan larva, some feed, some are flattened, some have a shell, some are zooid-like, but all form a ciliated, free-swimming larva for some length of time, then settle and undergo dramatic reorganization to reach their mature form.
A bryozoan colony begins with an ancestrula (the primary zooid), which is formed sexually. The colony then grows by asexual budding, in a pattern dictated by the particular taxon. Bryozoan colonies are found in a wide array of colony formations. Encrusting forms (most common) can cover large areas of rocks, algae, shells or exoskeletons of other invertebrates, ship hulls, and other hard substrates. Other forms include arboristic, branching, discus, amorphous blob shapes or (especially in freshwater taxa) the zooids can grow as buds along a cord-like stolon. There is one genus of mobile bryozoans, Cristatella, which, in the shape of a caterpillar, crawls along substrates at very slow speed! Some freshwater taxa also form new colonies by asexually producing statoblasts, which drop to the bottom if the parent colony does not survive and survive harsh conditions in a dormant mode. The statoblast then generates a new zooid when conditions are more optimal. (Brusca and Brusca 2003; Kozloff 1990)
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Rights holder/Author | Campbell, Dana, Campbell, Dana, EOL Rapid Response Team |
Source | http://eolspecies.lifedesks.org/pages/43558 |
Bryozoans are generally hermaphroditic. Rather than having discrete gonads, transient germ tissues on the zooid’s body wall peritoneum or on the funiculus (which connects the gut to the body wall) produce gametes. While sperm is spawned through pores in lophophore tentacles, eggs are usually harbored inside the body wall, and are internally fertilized by sperm, coming in on lophophore feeding currents (Brusca and Brusca 2003; Kozloff 1990).
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Rights holder/Author | Campbell, Dana, Campbell, Dana, EOL Rapid Response Team |
Source | http://eolspecies.lifedesks.org/pages/43558 |
The distinct lophophore organ of the bryozoans is also found in the brachiopods and phoronids, and these three phyla have long been associated as close relatives. However recent phylogenetic work now places the bryozoans quite distinct from the brachiopods and phoronids, as a more basal group in the containing superphylum Lophotrochozoa (Halanych 2004).
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Rights holder/Author | Campbell, Dana, Campbell, Dana, EOL Rapid Response Team |
Source | http://eolspecies.lifedesks.org/pages/43558 |
Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) Stats
Specimen Records:1875
Specimens with Sequences:2308
Specimens with Barcodes:1152
Species:305
Species With Barcodes:231
Public Records:1162
Public Species:158
Public BINs:289
Genomic DNA is available from 1 specimen with morphological vouchers housed at National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Auckland
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Rights holder/Author | Text can be freely copied and altered, as long as original author and source are properly acknowledged. |
Source | http://www.oglf.org/catalog/details.php?id=T01256 |
One could easily miss the bryozoans (entoprocts) or mistake them as an alga or coral. Bryozoans are a phylum of microscopic, aquatic invertebrates that live in sessile colonies of genetically identical members. The individuals are not autonomous and are termed zooids. They grow as calcified or gelatinous encrusting masses or branching tree-like structures. Having said that, there are notable exceptions, including a genus of solitary species (Monobryozoon), a mobile species (Cristatella mucedo), and a recently found planktonic species (in genus Alcyonidium) that floats as a ball (Peck et al. 1995). Like the phoronids and the brachiopods they feed using a specialized horseshoe-shaped structure called a lophophore. Known also as “moss animals,” there are somewhere between 4000-6000 living species, some estimate that number closer to 8000 species (Ryland 2005). Most bryozans are marine or brackish, fewer than 100 species live in freshwater (Massard and Geimer 2007). About 15,000 fossil species have been found, dating from the early Ordovician/late Cambrian. Molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate that bryozoans originated earlier in the Cambrian period (along with almost all other invertebrate phyla) and that the earliest bryozoans were non-calcified, thus did not fossilize (Fuchs et al. 2009).
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Rights holder/Author | Campbell, Dana, Campbell, Dana, EOL Rapid Response Team |
Source | http://eolspecies.lifedesks.org/pages/43558 |
recent & fossil
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Rights holder/Author | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License |
Source | http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=146142 |
Mosdiertjes zijn kolonie-vormende zeedieren. De kolonies lijken op kleurloos zeewier, een stuk kraakbeen, vitrage of kolonies van poliepen. Een mosdiertjeskolonie wordt gesticht door één mosdiertje, dat uit geslachtelijke voortplanting is ontstaan. Dit diertje kloont zichzelf ongeslachtelijk, waardoor er kopieën onstaan, die samen een kolonie vormen. Alle dieren in een kolonie zijn dus familie van elkaar. De diertjes kunnen zelfs riffen vormen; de zogenaamde 'levende stenen'. Voorbeelden zijn zeevinger, bladachtig hoornwier en de harige vliescelpoliep.
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Rights holder/Author | Ecomare |
Source | http://www.ecomare.nl/index.php?id=3747&L=2 |