Aplidium elegans

Aplidium elegans is a species of colonial sea squirts or sea strawberry, tunicates that is an benthic invertebrate part of the Polyclinidae family and Ascidiacea class.[2] It is native to shallow waters in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.[2] It is also found in between France and the United Kingdom.[2]

Aplidium elegans
Aplidium elegans
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Tunicata
Class: Ascidiacea
Order: Enterogona
Family: Polyclinidae
Genus: Aplidium
Species:
A. elegans
Binomial name
Aplidium elegans
(Giard, 1872)[1]
Synonyms
  • Fragarium elegans Giard, 1872 (original combination)
  • Fragaroides aurantiacum (Maurice, 1888)
  • Parascidia elegans (Giard, 1872)
  • Sidnyum elegans (Giard, 1872)

Description

Aplidium elegans form firm, flattened globular masses, that look like pink cushions from 3 to 4 cm long.[3] The color is striking, with large white papillae around the inhalant siphons of the zooids and deep pink coloration of the colony.[3] The arrangement of the zooids in the colony gives a meandering pattern, with cloacal canals between zooids.[3] The zooids are embedded in a common test and grouped around sinuous, irregular cloacal canals.[2] The oral siphons are slightly prominent and bordered of eight small white lobes.[2] Colonial ascidians, like other benthic invertebrates show great morphological variability in terms of shape, size and color in response to both genetic characteristics and local environmental conditions.[4]

Distribution and habitat

Aplidium elegans is found in the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and the English Channel.[4] The colonies are found on rocks in waters 5 meters to 20 meters deep.[4] Also can be found on moderately exposed rocky sites, usually with moderate tidal streams, attached to rocks.[3] The colony is around 50mm broad and 15mm thick.[3]

Biology

Aplidium elegans colony is made up of a couple different parts.[4] The zooid is the individual animal, and in a colony, there are multiple zooids.[4] The colony has a test or tunica which is a thick layer secreted by the mantle, containing cellulose and protecting the animal.[4] Every zooid then has an oral siphon which is an opening by which water is drawn in the ascidian to collect nutrients.[4] Aplidium elegans must also have a cloacal which water is expelled from the ascidian.[4]

gollark: videogame_hacker: rednet no longer uses textutils.unserialise because you can natively send tables.
gollark: aj224, are you pjals?
gollark: The block scanner works for CC.
gollark: My tape metadata format has become weirdly popular despite being quite poorly designed, so now there are two player things and three encoders.
gollark: I should really update the music collection on my ingame tape thing.

See also

References
  1. Giard, A. (1872). Recherches sur les Ascidies composées ou Synascidies. Archives de Zoologie Expérimentale et Générale. 1, pages 501-687, pls. 25-30
  2. Bay-Nouailhat A., September 2005, Description of Aplidium elegans, Available on line at http://www.european-marine-life.org/32/aplidium-elegans.php, consulted on 02 March 2019.
  3. Gabriele, M.; Bellot, A.; Gallotti, D.; Brunetti, R. (1999). Sublittoral hard substrate communities of the Northern Adriatic Sea. Cah. Biol. Mar. 40(1): 65-76
  4. Murugan R, Ananthan G., Arunkman A. (2018) Aplousobranchia ascidians in Andaman and Nicobar Islands: a combined morphological and molecular discrimination. Mitochondrial DNA Part A, 29, 879-884.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.