Many representatives of the fauna, living in the neighborhood of man, remain unnoticed by them. But global warming is making its own adjustments, and the situation is changing. One example is the bryozoan, first found in a Vancouver park.
Vancouver City Park "Stanley" (English Stanley Park) is one of the largest in the world: covering an area of 404.9 hectares, it is 10% larger than Central Park in New York. Large mammals are not found on its territory, but raccoons, coyotes, skunks, beavers, rabbits, squirrels and more than 200 species of birds live here in abundance. Recently, biologists studying the Stanley Park ecosystem discovered a strange creature in its reservoir. The jelly-like mass resembles a human brain.
Scientists explain that by itself this representative of the fauna is not a discovery: we are talking about the bryozoan, which belongs to the primitive animals. Tardigrades, snails, annelids and many other organisms belong to the same type.
Bryozoans (lat. Ectoprocta, or Bryozoa) are aquatic colonial animals. Their colony is formed by a huge number of microscopic modules (zooids), each of which is enclosed in a calcareous, chitinoid or gelatinous cell. Colonies have many forms: some cover accessible surfaces (stones, shells, algae), others develop independently, assuming the most convenient appearance in the current conditions.
According to biologists, bryozoans of this species have never been found in Stanley Park. According to one hypothesis, their appearance in this area is explained by the movement to the north, where it is getting warmer. Other biologists do not exclude that bryozoans have always lived here - they just went unnoticed earlier. The colony, feeding on algae, lived deep in the lake, but the warm weather led to a decrease in the water level. The animal did not find a new shelter and caught the eye of a man.
Anastasia Barinova