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Bryozoa
Micropora 'oceani' (sensu Busk 1859, non d’Orbigny)
Nomenclature
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Family: MicroporidaeGenus: Micropora
SUMMARY
Colonies are encrusting and multiserial. The ancestrula has a pear-shaped opesia and buds three daughter zooids (distal, and left and right distolateral), each with a trifoliate opesia; subsequent zooids have a hemielliptical opesia. Zooids at the stepped growing edge expose five elongate pore windows in their vertical walls, two on each distolateral wall and one on the distal wall.
Autozooids are about 0.6 mm long by 0.4 mm wide, and have a rounded rhomboidal outline shape. The frontal wall is an extensive, depressed, finely granular cryptocyst containing a pair of long, crescent-shaped opesiules. A short proximal gymnocyst may be visible and a raised mural rim surrounds the main, shelf-like part of the cryptocyst. The opesia is hemielliptical with a straight or slightly convex proximal edge, about 0.12 mm long by 0.17 mm wide. There are normally 4 oral spines, visible in ovicellate as well as non-ovicellate zooids. Ovicells are prominent and raised into a ridge medioproximally of which is a variably sized triangular window in the ectooecium.
Avicularia are adventitious, located on the proximal gymnocyst of some but not all of the autozooids. They are small, 0.10 mm or less in length, with a pointed, triangular rostrum raised distally and usually oriented distolaterally but sometimes laterally or even proximally. The pivotal bar is uncalcified.