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| Beautiful! See the two siphons in each tunicate? |
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| Tunicate-encrusted mooring line |
Look at the brilliant color of these tunicates above – beautiful! They
look like pretty marine flowers, no? No! Tunicates are chordates, related to
vertebrates (animals with spinal chords); these little critters have a primitive
version of a spine in the larval stage, when they’re free-living and
tadpole-like, though it disappears by the time they settle onto a substrate, attach
and develop into their sedentary adult form. Tunicates feed by pulling food
particles out of the water that enters their barrel-like bodies through the inflow
siphon, and discharged filtered water and waste through the outflow siphon.
Though they resemble anatomically simple animals such as anemones, they
actually are quite more complex. Tunicates are hermaphrodites, producing both
eggs and sperm. The sperm is released into the water to be taken in by other
tunicates to fertilize their eggs, and the eggs remain within the adult until
they hatch. The larvae are released for dispersal. Tunicates come in a wide
variety of forms and colors, as seen here. As you can seen here, in addition to
attaching to the bottom, tunicates also quite willingly attach to lines
underwater, such as those on mooring balls.
Tunicate Fun Fact: Tunicates are also called “sea squirts”
because, when you take them out of the water, they squirt. Always a good trick
to play on an unaware bystander.
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