Suborder TUBULIPORINA Milne Edwards, 1838

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Introduction

The colonies may be encrusting, or erect and forming branches, or encrusting with erect lobes. The zooids are enclosed in skeletal tubes, which have numerous, simple, fairly coarse pseudopores. The zooid orifice is a simple round opening at the distal end of the zooid. Gonozooids form bulbous expansions, either fitting between autozooid peristomes or covering several zooids and surrounding their peristomial tubes. As with the Articulina, the calcified wall between the zooid and the external environment is gymnocystal, including the colony basal wall in encrusting forms, and the distal portions of zooidal tubes. (Hayward & Ryland, 1985). The walls shared between contiguous zooids are cryptocystal. The term 'single walled', which is applied to the Tubuliporina, refers to the closely joined external cuticle and calcified gymnocyst, viewed as one layer.

The suborder contains 11 families, of which 10 families have Recent representatives. In Australian waters 7 of these families are recorded. However, family level classification has not yet been stabilised, so these figures are subject to modification.

General References

Hayward, P.J. & Ryland, J.S. 1985. Cyclostome Bryozoans. pp. 1-147 in Kermack, D.M. & Barnes, R.S.K. (eds). Synopses of the British Fauna. n.s London : E.J.Brill for the Linnean Society Vol. 34.

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