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1 November 2002 A New Cheilostome Bryozoan with Gigantic Zooids from the North-West Pacific
Andrei V. Grischenko, Paul D. Taylor, Shunsuke F. Mawatari
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Abstract

Gontarella gigantea gen. et sp. nov. is described from two stations, one in the Sea of Okhotsk and the second on the Pacific side of the Small Kuril Arc. This membraniporiform anascan cheilostome bryozoan has very large zooids, the largest known among extant sheet-like encrusting anascans. Comparative data on similar sheet-like cheilostomes gathered from the literature shows that the new species represents a conspicuous outlier in size, with the surface area of the zooid being approximately twice that of the next largest species. Skeletal evidence, including the lack of ovicells, indicates that G. gigantea belongs within the malacostegan family Electridae. The gigantic ancestrula suggests that the species has a cyphonautes larva about 1 mm in maximum dimension.

Andrei V. Grischenko, Paul D. Taylor, and Shunsuke F. Mawatari "A New Cheilostome Bryozoan with Gigantic Zooids from the North-West Pacific," Zoological Science 19(11), 1279-1289, (1 November 2002). https://doi.org/10.2108/zsj.19.1279
Received: 17 January 2002; Accepted: 1 August 2002; Published: 1 November 2002
KEYWORDS
bryozoans
taxonomy
zooidal size
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