Most significantly, they too are colonial animals and are composed of large ... as there are around 175 species of these zooid gatherings lurking in the ocean. Perhaps the most impressive is ...

Scientists say that a single zooid (formed from a single fertilized zygote ... and they aren't the only large colonial creatures, either. Corals are colonial animals, formed from thousands of tiny ...

Siphonophores are unusual animals made up of individual organisms ... while others enable the colony to reproduce or swim. An individual zooid cannot survive on its own because they specialize ...

Among these is the pyrosome, a colonial organism made up of hundreds ... linked by their place in the Chordata phylum, which includes animals with a notochord, a precursor to the backbone.

"Tunicates are simple little animals," Jaros said ... Pyrosomes are also colonial creatures, in the sense that a single small tunicate, called a "zooid," will form a colony with many other ...

These giant colonies start out as a single zooid. As they make copies of themselves, the "animal" gets bigger. The final size of the colony depends on its species and age. The individual zooids ...