Microscope Monday: Underwater Colonies of Hermaphrodites
The ocean is full of hermaphrodites—creatures that can be male and female at the same time. This one, spotted by SERC marine biologists in San Diego waters, is a colonial tunicate called Botrylloides diegensis. The golden tubes (called zooids) are individual organisms with some of their own organs, but they're all attached to a single cloacal chamber, forming their own colony. They can reproduce asexually by budding (creating new zooids) or by releasing eggs and sperm into the water, where they can fertilize each other. (Photo: Brianna Tracy-Sawdey/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center)
Learn more on our Marine Invasions Lab's NEMESIS database: http://invasions.si.edu/nemesis/browseDB/SpeciesSummary.jsp?TSN=-448