A mature colony: This view of a large
colony made up of several hundred individual animals, or zooids, is
about 5x3 cm in size. The photo was taken with a GoPro under water, with the
sun at a very oblique angle. Normally it would appear as just a flat orange
pancake. The small black holes, mostly in rows, are where individual zooids draw
in water, while the larger
irregular holes are where the water leaves the colony.A tadpole: It is about 2 mm long. It was formed from an egg
made by the colony which was fertilized with sperm from another colony.
The tadpole grows and develops for about a week in a womb pouch and is
then expelled from the colony to swim freely for a few days. The approximately 30
parallel rods around the middle of the head (the most visable is at the top)
that will become ampullae. After attaching to a solid surface they will spread
out from the body like spokes of wheel, seen clearly in the next image.
Young colony: Within 20-40 hours the ampullae have
spread out and the head and tail of the tadpole have metamorphized into the
body of a mature tunicate. Now it can eat by drawing water in through
the siphon (hole) at the top of the body and forcing it through the feeding
net and out the exit siphon at the side of the body (top in the figure).
The single bud on the left, and douple buds on the right of the body
are new zooids that will mature in about 40 hours.
