Creature Awaits #241

Each week I plan to feature an amazing creature, admiring God's fantastic artistry. Hopefully it’ll brighten someone’s day to see something new and interesting if they haven’t seen it before. : )

(Beautiful photograph taken by WestPark (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed))

Buoy Barnacles

Scientific Name: Dosima fascicularis

Region: Temperate waters across the Atlantic and Pacific

Size: About a .47"-.78" (~1.2cm-2cm) long shell portion

Interesting Notes: If unable to find a suitable floating surface to attach itself to, this delicate and unique barnacle secretes a gas-filled cement, creating its own natural float. It is the only known barnacle to do this. This structure is the pale yellow shape, similar in appearance to expanding foam, visible at left in the photo above. (Hopefully the little guys pictured found their way back to the sea after this photograph was taken! : ) )

HEY HELP my mum got this video down on the beach this morning and we have no idea what it is. After many reverse searches, I’ve determined it to be a Dosima fascicularis. BUT Dosima have tentacle-like things.

Maybe it’s just holding it’s tentacles close together but I don’t know! So if anyone has any other ideas hmu.

Scientists have discovered marine animals living on plastic debris in an area of the open ocean dubbed “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch”

A buoy barnacle, Dosima fascicularis, viewed from the side, with the aboral white floating at the water’s surface.

Credit…Denis Rieck

Pacific Ocean garbage patch is immense plastic habitat - BBC News

The graptolites of Abereiddy Bay

The graptolites of Abereiddy Bay

Graptolites are curious fossils that are common in Lower Palaeozoic rocks where other types of fossils are lacking. The word ‘graptolite’ comes from Greek words that mean ‘writing’ (graptos) and ‘stone’ (lithos), and refer to the fact that graptolite fossils look like pencil marks on stone, partly because they’re flat and partly because of the iridescence of many specimens when freshly exposed.…

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Dosima fascicularis detail 

Buoy Barnacle (Dosima fascicularis)

...a species of lepadid goose barnacle that boasts a cosmopolitan distribution, with a preference for temperate seas. True to its common name adult D. fascicularis will hang downwards from the water surface, held up by a float, and is carried along by currents filter feeding along the way. Larval D. fascicularis are planktonic and must attach to a float (usually flotsam) for metamorphosis into the adult form. However, the adults are eventually capable of using their own float, and are usually seen in aggregations of many individuals all using the same float.

Dosima fascicularis was formerly placed in the genus Lepas but is now placed in its own monotypic genus Dosima. Dosima is distinguished from Lepas by the exceptional brittleness of its exoskeleton and by the form of the carina.

Classification

Animalia-Arthropoda-Crustacea-Maxillopoda-Cirripedia-Pedunculata-Lepadidae-Dosima-D. fascicularis

Images: Notafly and Keith Hiscock

Dosima fascicularis detail