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Ascidians

Macro view of a colony of tunicates, Botrylloides sp. (Stolidobranchia - Styelidae)

Photo credit: ©Klaus Stiefel

Locality: Nelson Bay, Australia

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Chain Tunicate (Botrylloides violaceus), washed up on shore.

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May I interest you in a Chain Tunicate? (Botrylloides violaceus)

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#3045 - Botrylloides perspicuus

A colonial sea squirt native to the coastlines of Southern Australia. The zooids live in meandering chains, and share a common cloaca, and eventually form a thick rubbery mat on rocks, sea grass, larger seaweeds,mnmangrove roots or docks. The colour is highly variable, ranging from green to blue to pink to red.

Botrylloides and the related Botryllus are considered invasive, and some species are now widespread around the world.

Leighton Beach, WA Naturalists Club Centenary Walk, Perth, WA

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File:Botrylloides violaceus.jpg

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Chordate or Cnidarian?

(Left: Doliolids; Right: Siphonophores)

Doliolids. The beauty of starting with a reasonable, mildly tadpole-like body plan, and successively turning it into a filter-feeding pouch, then a jet-powered jelly, and finally having it become the chordate version of siphonophores.

Apparently, the concept of "have a jelly drag a string with more jellies attached to it" transcends 600 million years of evolution.

Also, kudos for fitting alternation of generations into this! That doliolid dragging the whole chain forward reproduces asexually, and its direct children on the chain too, but its grandchildren on the branches of the chain canreproduce sexually, giving birth to new asexual chain-builders! Doliolid life cycles are pretty elaborate, and proof of the diversity of sexes in the animal world beyond the binary!

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Was anyone gonna tell me predatory tunicates exist and they're the ghost of piranha plant past

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Tunicate colony of the genus Botryllus

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we found a baby tunicate today! one day this little guy will turn into a mass

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Photo by John Paul Meillon | Info

Salpa maxima. A salp is a barrel-shaped, planktic tunicate. It moves by contracting, thereby pumping water through its gelatinous body, one of the most efficient examples of jet propulsion in the animal kingdom. The salp strains the pumped water through its internal feeding filters, feeding on phytoplankton. Salps are common in equatorial, temperate, and cold seas, where they can be seen at the surface, singly or in long, stringy colonies. The most abundant concentrations of salps are in the Southern Ocean (near Antarctica), where they sometimes form enormous swarms, often in deep water, and are sometimes even more abundant than krill.

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Salpingectomy is great but I see the word and I can think of is a procedure to keep you from turning into a salp

I don't think a salpingectomy would help a salp, though. It's during their asexual reproductive stage that they produce a whole chain of babies attached to them (the babies then going on to sexually reproduce and get pregnant with their own babies, still attached to the asexual grandparent). Photo of the baby chain with a diver for scale:

Incidentally, they're more closely related to us vertebrates (animals with bones) than any other animal--we're both chordates!

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File:Inside a tunicate, teluk maya, wakatobi, 2018 (45088837314).jpg

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“The pro-locomotion Deep State will try to tell you that it’s somehow ‘backwards’ and ‘limiting’ to stay rooted in a single position. Of course, these ‘Vertebrates’, as they call themselves, are just immature hippies who don’t understand basic biology and refuse to grow up.” - Average Tunicate

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Ever wanted to ride a giant tube?

Behold, pyrosomes! Cousins of salps from my previous post, they are also superorganisms, but to the extreme. Each "tube" you see there is actually made of thousands of tiny organisms called zooids, all filtering water and pushing it towards the inside of the tube - in effect making it a giant underwater water slide!

They can get nearly 20 meters long, and are often bioluminescent! They're found in warm waters near the surface, all across the globe!

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Angeltober #22: These angelic predatory tunicates constantly produce a low "mmmwaaaaaa" sound

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Ciona sea squirts By: Unknown photographer From: The Grolier Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals 1994

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Carry on Countdown - Day 1 - Creature

Alternate title: Don't ask where inspiration comes from, just run with it.

For the curious, this is a predatory tunicate, or ghostfish. They live in the deep sea and measure around 13 cm (5 inches). It is not known whether they eat sour cherry scones, but they definitely are. A Creature.