Victorella pavida
Victorella pavida
The first picture has been made by Marco Faasse and is used here with gratitude
The picture shows clearly that V. pavida has a very different structure and polyp shape as compared to the real freshwater bryozoans.
What strikes me is the relatively chaotic mass of zooids. The zooids themselves are much smaller and thinner than for example P. repens.
Compared to other bryozoans Victorella also has very few tentacles.
The second photo, my own production, again shows several V. pavida zooids with their polyps extended.
In the middle some Stentor sp. ciliates can be seen as inverted pointy hats.
This photo is made, just like the previous and following ones, in a petri disk. This is because the pond this V. pavida colony comes from, has very bad visibility, so making in-situ pictures is not doable. The photo shows a colony growing on a reed.
A further enlargement shows even more clearly that the zooids are growing in a haphazard structure.
The final photo shows the edge of the colony. For who looks well the stolons - thin tubes that connect the zooids - can be seen.
