some stuff i’ve learned by skimming through this book:
So there are MULTIPLE bryozoan species whose colonies can move. In fact, the ability to crawl around has independently evolved TWICE. There are little disc shaped groups of Guys that can just? move around??? on the sea floor??? because some of them have decided “okay, we’ll be the legs” and the others send them food and everything???? and there’s pictures of them in an aquarium and one colony is crawling on top of the other one hpbibghgfdfvklk????
there are “bryoliths” which are bryozoan colonies that envelop sediments and then just roll around on the sea floor like pebbles. alive pebbles.
there is an “amphibious” species that grows on mangrove leaves
some of them are symbionts with hermit crabs! some with nautiluses! If there is a Surface and it is Wet, there will be bryozoans on it sooner or later.
sometimes when two bryozoan colonies are competing for space, they will just. MERGE and new zooids budded at the site of the merge are genetic chimeras of the two colonies. This is fine
We Still Do Not Know how they cause different types of zooids to form. Like, how do they decide if new Guys are going to be feeding zooids or they’re going to have Weapons or what. We assume they can just selectively turn their genes on and off (as one does) but how.
their nervous systems are all connected, so they basically share a brain???? they can respond to stimuli and stuff??? and if they move around it seems that they are deciding to move??? i’m still??? a little freaked out by how much the Guys might Know
I need to show y'all some of the photos because these things can be FREAKY looking. Seriously they look so alien.I’m obsessed
The freshwater genus Hislopia can reproduce by just…breaking off some guys, and they swim for a while before settling down and cloning themselves to make a new colony. What
fences, spirals, and whatever the hell that last one is doing on that crinoid stem
Here are the crawly guys
Team work makes the dream work
Oh my god oh my god I’ve never seen what those walking ones actually look like walking I had no idea they lifted up on little legs I NEED THEM
A fan mussel among the seagrass it calls home (Arnaud Abadie on Flickr)
The fan mussels (Pinna nobilis) are a species of enormous mussel which live in seagrass beds of the Mediterranean Sea. They can grow to nearly 4 feet long (though most are 1-2 feet in size at maturity), and live with most of their bodies protruding straight up out of the sediment, anchored down into the sand with long…
Some shells of the carnivorous genus Cardiomya. Notice the protuberance off one side, making space for the overdeveloped siphon they use to capture prey (Machado et al. 2016)
You might think of clams as rather pacifistic creatures. Most of them are; the majority of bivalves are filter-feeding organisms that suck in immense amounts of seawater and eat the yummy stuff being carried by the currents.…
Oyster. Reading that word, you probably formed an image in your mind of a rough-shelled creature with a shiny mother-of-pearl (nacreous) inside that someone pulled out of some silt in an estuary. And yes, that’s what most oyster’s look like. Some oysters are of additional economic value through their creation of pearls. These pearl oysters have…
The heart cockle (Corculum cardissa) is so named because of its heart shaped shell shape. It is native to warm equatorial waters of the Indo-Pacific. While many bivalves sit with the their ventral valve facing down, the heart cockle sits on its side, with one side of both valves facing downward. the valves have adapted to resemble wings and are flat on the bottom
Porcellanopagurus nihonkaiensis wearing a bivalve shell (Source)
Some of you may be aware that I harbor great affection for hermit crabs. I own terrestrial Caribbean hermits. Your mental image of hermits may feature a wardrobe of gastropod (snail) shells, which are by far the most common mollusk contractor they use to construct their homes, but as I’ve discussed, they actually have great…
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