Meeting Abstract
Life history traits in colonial animals, such as erect cheilostome Bryosoa, are extremely variable as many factors contribute to both the growth of the colony, and the growth of individual zooids within the colony. While photographic and tagging studies have been shown to be successful in measuring colonial growth, these methods are less reliable for flexible, joined, three-dimensional species. Counting individual zooids in a colony or measuring zooid length is very difficult and laborious, thus making ecological studies surrounding these organisms challenging. Through morphometric analyses, we sought to determine whether a correlation exists between a specific growth metric to use as a proxy for the total number of zooids. Tricellaria inopinata is a non-indigenous bryozoan which was recently introduced to the North-western Atlantic shores and has been an ecological and economic threat to nearshore waters. After identifying eight metrics to model the total number of zooids within T. inopinata colonies, preliminary results suggest the total number of branches and total length of major branches were significantly correlated with the total number of zooids. Using these findings, the total number of zooids of T. inopinata and other species of colonial bryozoans can more easily be assessed, which may facilitate further ecological experiments on these three-dimensional colonial organisms.
