beaumasters 的最愛

Forms dense aggregations of shell-incrusted tubes about 5 mm diameter in sandy sediments on top of and between rocks in wave-protected, low intertidal habitat.

3rd image: hood of tube.
4th image: feeding tentacles extending from hood.
5th image: worm removed from tube (tube as shown 121 mm long, but probably missing part of posterior end)
6th image: close-up of worm
7th image: worm in MgCl2
8th image: detail of gills

Images 3-8 of worm collected from same locality on 20 January 2019.

Quite small, diametre of maybe 1cm, several of them, near lots of dried up blue bottles and same colour as tentacles, but didn't seem to be tentacles. It didn't sting. Was soft. Wondered if it was some type of slug with spherical cerata?? or a tunicate? I have no idea.

Saxicolous on coastal andesitic conglomerate rocks subject to salt spray. Thallus granular; minutely subsquamulose or lacking, in irregular patches; granules 0.2–0.5 mm diameter; golden yellow to orange-white, K+ reddish purple, rounded to irregular, convex or plane, with apparent brown-black basal prothallus. Apothecia scattered and rounded to clustered and contorted through mutual pressure, 0.1–1.2 mm diameter; disc subconcave to plane; orange-brown-red-brown; thalline margin continuous or of scattered granules, thin or occasionally thick, same colour as thallus, proper margin thin or thick, raised and orange, paler than disc. Epithecium yellow-orange, densely granular, 8–25 μm thick. Hymenium colourless, without oil droplets, 60–80 μm tall.Paraphyses slender, 1.5 μm wide, apices submoniliform, swollen, to 5 μm diameter. Asci clavate or cylindrical-clavate, 45–70 × 12–23 μm, eight-spored. Ascospores biseriate in ascus, ellipsoid,
12.00–26.25 × 5.0–10.0 μm wide; septum 3.0–7.5 μm, one-quarter to one-third the length of the spore. Description from Sparks et al. 2014 (Notes on Caloplaca allanii Zahlbr. (Teloschistaceae) a poorly known West Auckland, North Island, New Zealand endemic, New Zealand Journal of Botany 52: 304-308).