Invertebrate Embryology

Coos Bay is home to two different species of oysters: Crassostrea gigas , a large species (typically up to 20 cm in shell height) which is...

Haven't you ever wondered how larval invertebrates in the ocean orient themselves? The answer often lies in a small balance organ called...

Bryozoa is a phylum of miniature, sessile, colonial invertebrates characterized by a crown of tentacles called the lophophore that facilita...

Adult Hemigrapsus  nudus can be found under rocks and in crevices of the mid-intertidal on the open coast and in estuaries, here found on ...

The life cycle of the hydrozoan medusa, Proboscidactyla flavicirrata, is one that is typical of the hydrozoans, with full alternation of ...

Ascidians (class Ascidiacea), commonly known as sea-squirts, are a class of sessile, filter-feeding chordates who live solitarily or colonia...

This is Clytia gregaria , formerly known as Phialidium gregarium . The instructor of our Embryology class collected many adult individuals...

This is a side view of a blastula of the phoronid, a.k.a. horseshoe worm, Phoronopsis harmeri . It is about 22 hours after egg release (de...

Echinoderms, sea urchins and sea stars in particular, are classical objects of embryological studies because it is relatively easy to obtain...

Below are pictures of early embryos of the ctenophore Beroe sp. Three adults were collected around Charleston docks near OIMB in mid-May an...

Mediaster aequalis is a bright red asteroid, three to seven inches in diameter, found subtidally off the coast of Oregon. M. aequalis ...

I collected the two polychaete larvae pictured here from a plankton sample taken off a dock in Charleston, OR on May 8, 2013. The thing tha...

The tide was low at 6 am on May 8th as our Embryology class descended into South cove at Cape Arago, OR. As we made our way to the tide po...

Copepoda, with approximately 12,000 described species, is one of largest taxa of crustaceans and a large contributor in most plankton sam...

This is a picture of an adult nudibranch Aeolidia papillosa , found on the Charleston docks near OIMB. As with many other nudibranchs, A. p...

This is a marine rotifer from the genus Synchaeta (according to a key in Wallace & Snell 2010). Rotifers are a phylum of small, mostl...

Phoronopsis harmeri is a member of Phoronida, a relatively small phylum of sessile, tube-building marine worms. Phoronids release sperm i...