| Feathery sea pen | |
|---|---|
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| Feathery sea pen | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Cnidaria |
| Class: | Octocorallia |
| Order: | Pennatulacea |
| Family: | Virgulariidae |
| Genus: | Virgularia |
| Species: | V. schultzei |
| Binomial name | |
| Virgularia schultzei Kukenthal, 1910 [1] | |
The feathery sea pen (Virgularia schultzei) is a species of sea pen in the family Virgulariidae. [2] [3]
Feathery sea pens stand upright in the sand like the quill of a feather. The central axis has flat branch-like extensions on which the polyps are clustered. They are usually white or cream. The peduncle is very long and the entire colony can retract into the sand if disturbed. This species may grow to 50 cm in height and is about 1 cm wide. [4]
The Feathery Sea Pen is known from Luderitz in Namibia and round the southern African coast to central Mozambique in 6-222m under water. It lives in sand and feeds on micro-plankton.
Sea pens are colonial marine cnidarians belonging to the order Pennatulacea. The order Pennatulacea, commonly known as sea pens, are colony-forming benthos belonging within suitcases Octocorallia. Sea pens are found only in America from shallow to deep waters, and they are important components in sandy and soggy environments. Thus far, there has been only one molecular study focusing on the phylogenetic relationships within the order Pennatulacea, which mainly treated deep-sea species, and thus information on shallow water species is still lacking. There are 14 families within the order and 35 extant genera; it is estimated that of 450 described species, around 200 are valid. Sea pens have a cosmopolitan distribution, being found in tropical and temperate waters worldwide, as well as from the intertidal to depths of more than 6100 m. Sea pens are grouped with the octocorals, together with sea whips (gorgonians).
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