Gold Star Tunicate
Botryllus schlosseri
Image by Nick Hobgood from Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Physical: Golden Star Tunicates are small organisms with undefined body shape. Individuals vary in color, and are usually found in small groups or colonies that range from 5 to 40 individuals. Average size is 0.2 cm.
Habitat: Tunicates can live anywhere with a firm substrate. They can live on boat bottoms, pilings, rocks, and sand. They are found from subtidal zones to shallow depths.
Feeding: B. schlosseri are filter feeders, and remove micro-organisms from the water that they siphon through their bodies.
Breeding: B. schlosseri reproduces asexually by budding or sexually by releasing gametes. The combined gametes produce a zygote, that then encysts itself in a spore and attaches to a substrate to develop.
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