Bryozoans - Natural history artistic poster - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Bryozoa

Original title Bryozoa - Moostierre

Cristatella Poster - Worms of the class Bryozoa or Bryozoa (Order Bryozoa)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Phylum of Vermiform Animals (Vermalia)
Main class of Mouthworms (Prosopygia)
Class of Moss Animals (Bryozoa)
Order of Phylactolemae (Lophopoda)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Bryozoa - Bryozoa :

The moss-animals (Bryozoa) form a class rich in forms in the phylum of true vermiform animals (Vermalia); they live mainly in the sea, where their colonies cover stones and other objects in the form of crusts, leaves, bushes, etc. However, the order of the Arm-bearers (Lophopoda), represented on this plate, is found only in fresh water; here they cover aquatic plants and tree roots with their creeping colonies and are often found on the underside of the leaves of duckweed, water lilies, etc. In their youth, each small moss-animal is a simple vermiform person (Fig. 6), closely related to a rotifer (Rotatoria); but by the graceful crown of tentacles surrounding the mouth, they acquire a similarity to the hydroid polyps (Plates 6 and 25) and are therefore often called "mossy polyps"; However, they differ considerably from the latter in their more developed internal organization (presence of a body cavity, an anus, a cerebral ganglion, etc.). - The reproduction of moss animals is partly sexual (by fertilized eggs), partly asexual, by budding. Most bryozoans then form, by often repeated budding, large colonies or corms, composed of very many small individuals and characterized by the varied shape of the secreted hard shells. - The freshwater arm-bearers (Lophopoda) are characterized by a horseshoe-shaped support of the tentacle crown as well as by the production of internal duration germs (statoblasts, figs. 1 and 2). These "winter buds" overwinter, and in spring, a germ emerges from them, which immediately develops into a young individual (fig. 6). This then produces lateral buds (fig. 3). The round duration germs surround themselves with a hard, lens-shaped envelope; the edge of this brown lens is often surrounded by a graceful floating ring whose numerous small chambers are filled with air (Figs. 1 and 2). In this way, the statoblasts are kept floating on the surface of the water and transported.

Species present on the Bryozoa naturalist board - Cristatella :

• Cristatella mucedo
• Plumatella repens
• Alcyonella flabellum
• Lophopus crystallinus