''Appendicularia'' is a genus of

larvacean Larvaceans, copelates or appendicularians, class Appendicularia, are solitary, free-swimming tunicates found throughout the world's oceans. While larvaceans are filter feeders like most other tunicates, they keep their tadpole-like shape as adu ...

s in the family Fritillariidae.

History

The genus name ''Appendicularia'' was originally coined by Chamisso and Eysenhardt in 1821, naming the first discovered

''Appendicularia flagellum''. However, the lack of an accurate description made it a ''

nomen nudum In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, a ''nomen nudum'' ('naked name'; plural ''nomina nuda'') is a designation which looks exactly like a scientific name of an organism, and may have originally been intended to be one, but it has not been published ...

'', leading to it being reused by

Hermann Fol Hermann Fol (23 July 1845, Saint-Mandé – March 1892) was a Swiss zoologist and has been considered a pioneer of embryology. He studied under Édouard Claparède and Ernst Haeckel and took a special interest in the fertilization and embryolog ...

for the species ''Appendicularia sicula''.

Description

''Appendicularia'' is relatively small in comparison to other larvaceans, with an adult body length of around 0.4 mm and a tail length of around 1.1 mm in ''A. sicula''. The body is flattened in its front half, and bulged in its posterior half. The

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air c ...

is ellipsoidal, measuring around 2.6 mm in length.

Distribution

The first description of ''Appendicularia sicula'' was made from specimens found near

Messina Messina ( , ; ; ; ) is a harbour city and the capital city, capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of 216,918 inhabitants ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. Since then, it has also been found in low-depth waters near the coasts of the

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese islands of

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's Japanese archipelago, four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa Island, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Ryukyu Islands, Islands ...

and

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

References

External links

''Appendicularia''
at WoRMS Appendicularia Tunicate genera {{tunicata-stub