Avicularium

Avicularia (from Latin Avicula = the bird ) are specialized individual animals of a bryozoan colony take over the defense tasks. Avicularia have this name because they resemble a bird's beak and perform snapping movements. A Real, solid rostrum ( " upper mandible " ) hits an existing from a modified operculum " lower mandible " and holds a foreign body. Avicularia are there to prevent overgrowth of the colony with foreign organisms.

The Cyclostomata and Ctenostomata have no avicularia.

Swell

• Wilfried Westheide & Reinhard Rieger: Systematic Zoology Part 1: protozoa and invertebrates, page 773, 2nd edition, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag Heidelberg • Berlin, 2007, ISBN 3-8274-1575-6

• Anatomy (eddy lots)