I’ve written about these things before.  But that was when I saw them up north.  I don’t know why I’d never seen them in the south, or why it never occurred to me they would be down here.  I guess I’d never paid attention.

Well they are here in Florida.  Yes indeed.  I happened upon these magnificent bryozoan (Pectinatella magnifica), a family of small filter feeding invertebrates that live as colonies in aquatic habitats, while paddling the backwaters of the Loxahatchee River out at Riverbend Park in Jupiter.

They’re usually found under the surface, clinging to  tree limbs  that have fallen into the water.  In one of the photos below I used my paddle to pull the branch to which the colony was attached out of the water to grab a few shots.

And I must conclude by pointing out that while perusing the scientific papers in preparation for this blog post (I go all out for my readers), I found the following notation in a 2009 paper published in the Italian Journal of Zoology  entitled “First report about freshwater Bryozoa in Florida (Lake Apopka).”

You may not think it excuses my lack of knowledge of bryozoan in Florida, but I think it does.  Here the notation:

“Knowledge regarding bryozoan diversity and distribution in Florida is poor and it concerns exclusively the finding of Urnatella gracilis (Hull et al. 1980), whereas studies on bryozoan distribution in the northeastern USA are numerous.”

Enjoy the photos.

All photos by Ron Haines.