The epizoic fauna of Flustra foliacea [Bryozoa]

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONVarious authors during the last century (Johnston, 1847; Hincks, 1868, 1880) and more recently (D. Eggleston, unpublished†) have recorded a number of species as epizoites on the perennial bryozoan Flustra foliacea (L.) (Table 1); but the ecology of the ‘community’ (Hedgpeth, 1957) of epizoites and their interaction with the living substratum has never been studied. The sessile fauna of Flustra fronds includes species of seven different phyla, but it can be said of only a few that the fronds provide their typical habitat. For example, the barnacles are never very numerous and the lamellibranchs rarely reach adult size. This paper is concerned mainly with the most common epizoites: the hydroids and bryozoans. The distribution and orientation of some of these species on the fronds are of ecological interest.