Heteropolypus ritteri
| Heteropolypus ritteri | ||||||||||||
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Heteropolypus ritteri on the Davidson Seamount at a depth of 1470 meters |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Heteropolypus ritteri | ||||||||||||
| ( Nutting , 1909) |
Heteropolypus ritteri ( Syn .: Anthomastus ritteri ) is an octocoral livingin the eastern Pacific off California and Baja California . It was described in 1909 on the basis of a few specimens thatwere collectedfrom 385 to 1250 meters in the Channel Islands of California . The art epithet honors William E. Ritter from the University of California .
features
The coral has a trunk and a club-shaped capitulum sitting on it, which can reach a diameter of 15 centimeters. They are animal colonies made up of many individual polyps . A few are large feeding polyps ("autozooids") that protrude over the capitulum and have eight feathered tentacles. Much more common are the tiny tentacle-free tubular polyps (“siphozooids”), which are responsible for pumping in and out the water, which is important for the stability of the coral. The autozooids can completely withdraw into the capitulum, leaving behind indentations with a diameter of 6 millimeters. The withdrawal occurs after disturbances, as well as in an endogenous rhythm of 16.8 to 38.8 hours. The surface of the capitulum and the walls of the autozooids are reinforced by needle-shaped sclerites . There are also star-shaped sclerites between the siphozooids.
The coral is generally red in color, the autozooids are transparent or slightly bluish. There are also very light, almost white and pink ones. However, in the depths of the sea where she lives, there is complete darkness.
nutrition
The excretions of Heteropolypus ritteri contain sand and sediments. It is therefore believed that it feeds on organic particles that are blown up. Some specimens of Heteropolypus ritteri collected with the help of ROVs are kept in open aquariums connected to the ocean at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and fed with chopped krill . Therefore one suspects that they also eat zooplankton .
Reproduction
In contrast to corals living in shallow water, which spawn depending on the cycle of the moon phases or on the water temperature, Heteropolypus ritteri continuously releases planula larvae that were previously hatched in the siphozooids. Large colonies can produce more than 4000 larvae. The larvae go through a planktonic phase of two to over a hundred days and then settle. The growth is initially very low and increases sharply when the first three to four autozooids have formed after 1 to 2 years. As the size increases, growth slows down again. Anthomastus ritteri is likely to live to be around 25 to 30 years old, much older than most of the octocorals that live in shallow water.
literature
- Alf Jacob Nilsen: Anthomastus ritteri a deep water octocoral from the East Pacific . in KORALLE, marine aquarium specialist magazine, No. 29 October / November 2004, Natur und Tier Verlag Münster, ISSN 1439-779X
- CS McFadden, SC France, JA Sánchez, P. Alderslade: A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) based on mitochondrial protein-coding sequences , doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2006.06.010
Web links
- van Ofwegen, L. (2014). Heteropolypus ritteri (Nutting, 1909) . World Register of Marine Species, accessed August 28, 2014