Multizooidal Budding in Parasmittina trispinosa (Johnston) (Bryozoa, Cheilostomata)

Two principally different wall types occur in the bryozoan colony: Exterior walls delimiting the super‐individual, the colony, against its surroundings and interior walls dividing the body cavity of the colony thus defined into units which develop into sub‐individuals, the zooids. In the gymnolaemate bryozoans generally, whether uniserial or multiserial, the longitudinal zooid walls are exterior, the transverse (proximal and distal) zooid walls interior ones. The radiating zooid rows grow apically to form “tubes” each surrounded by exterior walls but subdivided by interior (transverse) walls. The stenolaemate bryozoans show a contrasting mode of growth in which the colony swells in the distal direction to form one confluent cavity surrounded by an exterior wall but internally subdivided into zooids by interior walls. In the otherwise typical gymnolaemate Parasmittina trispinosa the growing edge is composed of a series of “giant buds” each surrounded by exterior walls on its lateral, frontal, basal and distal sides and forming an undifferentiated chamber usually 2–3 times as broad and 3 or more times as long as the final zooid. Its lumen is subdivided by interior walls into zooids 2–3, occasionally 4, in breadth. This type of zooid formation is therefore similar to the “common bud” or, better‐named, “multizooidal budding” characteristic of the stenoleamates but has certainly evolved independently as a special modification of the usual gymnolaemate budding.