Sentences with word «tunicate»

«I think it's premature to say that they have proved the position of tunicates,» says Billie Swalla, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle.
During dry years, when bay waters remained salty, one invader dominated above all others: the invasive tunicate Ciona robusta.
But when the wetter winters of 2006 and 2011 hit, Ciona and other solitary tunicates like it were unable to cope with the massive influxes of freshwater.
Jellyfish and pelagic tunicates live on smaller plankton and thus consume organic carbon.
Scientists from Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center confirmed the presence of dozens of species native to Japanese coastal waters — including barnacles, starfish, urchins, anemones, amphipods, worms, mussels, limpets, snails, solitary tunicates and algae — that were on a large floating dock in Japan that washed ashore at Agate Beach near Newport, Oregon in June 2012.
Many of the new species, like colonial tunicates and encrusting bryozoans, are non-native.
Predatory tunicates spend their days attached to rocks feeding on small animals that swim into their hood - shaped mouths.
In consequence, the data available up to now are scarce and we are just starting to comprehend the fundamental properties that will allow us to better understand the role of jellyfish and pelagic tunicates in the global carbon cycle.»
Although some species such as jellyfish and tunicates such as salp may multiply quickly to fill such gaps, they provide so little nutrition that most predators do not pursue them and the food chain remains short.
If you've seen a Venus flytrap consume prey, you've got a pretty good idea of how a predatory tunicate eats.
Fishermen have never seen so many of the tropical tunicates, and they've even stopped fishing in areas where tens of thousands of them are being caught in nets and hooks.
Other potential invaders are the shore crab, certain tunicates like Didemnum vexillum and the so - called «Japanese skeleton shrimp» (Caprella mutica).
When the researchers built an evolutionary tree from these comparative data, the amphioxus branched off earliest, followed by tunicates and larvaceans, with vertebrates being the most recent to evolve, the team reports 23 February in Nature.
Charles Darwin thought they were relatives of mollusks; in the mid-1800s, however, Russian biologist Alexander Kowalevsky countered that the mobile tunicate larva, with its dorsal cartilaginous column resembling a spine, should be grouped with vertebrates and not clams and snails — even though the adult never develop a backbone.
Consider the stalked tunicate — also known by the delicious - sounding name «Asian sea squirt» — which has taken over what used to be blue mussel habitat from Maine to New Jersey.
In field and laboratory experiments scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has shown that dead jellyfish and pelagic tunicates sink much faster than phytoplankton and marine snow remains.
Lots of small tunicates and seaslugs and large grouper and jacks.
Iridescent azure vase sponges and blue bell tunicates add to the color of this site and decorator crabs and neck crabs are can be seen clinging to the sea fans.
Believe it or not, there actually has been a good deal of research done on whether salps, a group of tubular, free - floating tunicates (which one of my former professor affectionately to as nature's «poop machines»), could help slow climate change.
In their place, mat - like colonial tunicates and encrusting bryozoans took over.
As you drift north through the channel, the topography shifts from a gentle slope to steep wall, festooned with colourful soft corals, huge gorgonian sea fans, and sea squirts and tunicates in a multitude of sizes and shapes.
Yet a new genetic analysis puts them into the evolutionary spotlight: these creatures, also known as tunicates, are the closest relatives to vertebrates.
During dry years, solitary tunicates (left) dominated San Francisco Bay's fouling community.
A favorite destination is Laughing Bird Caye National Park, which supports large stands of staghorn and elkhorn corals, along with thick growths of tunicates and anemones.
Every tunicate can reproduce by itself if conditions warrant.
In this study, the researchers began with a naturally occurring antimicrobial peptide called clavanin - A, which was originally isolated from a marine animal known as a tunicate.
Chordates also include two kinds of invertebrates: tunicates, and a small, eel - like creature called amphioxus.
Tunicates and larvaceans evolve rapidly and have gained and lost so many genes that it's very hard to position them properly in an evolutionary tree, they note.
The tunicate's 117 million bases sequenced include roughly 16,000 genes.
Related sites Brief description of the tunicate genome project, with links to tunicate biology sites More information about Ciona
In early 2001, researchers Nori Satoh of Kyoto University in Japan and Michael Levine and Daniel Rokhsar of the University of California, Berkeley, convinced the sequencers at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, to take on the tunicate Ciona intestinalis.
Tunicates have puzzled biologists for more than a century.
This week, researchers are unveiling the DNA code of one of the most unusual creatures sequenced to date: the tunicate.
The researchers investigated the genetics of a native marine invertebrate species (the tunicate Ciona intestinalis) in the English Channel, an area with a high prevalence of shipping.
But when wetter years poured more freshwater into the Bay, colonial tunicates (right) took over.
He is especially interested in the fouling community, underwater creatures like tunicates and bryozoans that grow on boats, docks and fishing and aquaculture equipment.
Retailers will want to stock varieties of sponges, zoanthids, anemones, tube anemones, sea slugs, nudibranchs, Tridacna clams, thorny oysters, flame scallops, feather - duster worms, lobsters, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and tunicates.
Either way, a reef tank should look like a living reef, and this may include such elements as sponges, gorgonians, tunicates, corals, snails, crabs, shrimp, macro-algae — and last, but not least, fish.
Can you really make money selling snails, crabs, shrimp, anemones, sea hares, sea slugs, lobsters, sea stars, brittle stars, serpent stars, corallimorphs, clams, scallops, tunicates, sea urchins, hermit crabs, feather dusters, limpets, chitons, tube anemones, zoanthids, sponges, etc.?
There are also some interesting sessile invertebrates — clams, feather dusters, the very popular sea anemones (which are technically coral - like animals) and tunicates.
These cayes include deep, clear lagoons encircled by steep, lush coral ridges, with coral reef, mangrove — root, and peat substrates, thickly overgrown by layers of brilliantly colored organisms, including sponges, tunicates, and marine plants.
Shrimps, brittle stars, nudlibranchs, tube worms and tunicates of every imaginable color are often overlooked by the diver.
Flamboyant nudibranchs, frogfish, feather stars, tunicate's, cleaner shrimp, ghost pipe fish, green turtles, leaf fish, fire urchins, and coleman shrimp can all be found here.
The BBRRS is also home to endemic species including several Yucatan birds, island lizards, several fishes, tunicates, and sponges, making it an area with one of the highest levels of marine biodiversity in the Atlantic.
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