Barnacle Anatomy

The abdomen is vestigial. Tagmata the barnacle body consists of an anterior head with four pairs of appendages and a thorax with six pairs.

Barnacles Drawn In

Four more plates form a door which the barnacle can open or close depending on the tide.

Barnacle anatomy. Unlike mollusks barnacles dont pump water but depend on water circulation in exposed areas. For one many species are hermaphroditic. When the tide goes out the barnacle closes shop to conserve moisture.

They also need to compete for scarce living space with limpets mussels and other barnacles. That is they can produce both eggs and sperm. Barnacles are marine animals that live in both shallow and tidal waters.

Barnacles are suspension feeders feeding on plankton whilst some species are parasites. Then they bridge the distance by. It is attached to each scutum at the adductor muscle.

The barnacles are also suspension feeders that are sessile and feed on detritus and plankton. Percebes or lepas anatifera the great goose barnacle are attached to rocks living in the intertidal zone of the coast. The calcareous shells are called scotum and tergum.

The barnacle then feeds by using its feathery feet to capture small edible bits and critters that float by. These white cones have six nearly fitted plates that form a circle around the crustacean. A barnacle without a stalk attached directly to its support adductor muscle or adductor scutorum the main muscle for closing the operculum.

Since they live in a very congested community all that they have to do is select a suitable neighbor for a mating. With goose barnacles the only edible kind the head extends to form a tough flexible stalk the edible part. The barnacle secretes the calcium hard plates which totally encase them.

They use their net like cirri to reach out into the water and back in a constant drum like rhythm in order to capture food. Study the external anatomy in a dissecting pan on the stage of a dissecting microscope. A barnacle is a type of arthropod constituting the infraclass cirripedia in the subphylum crustacea and is hence related to crabs and lobsters.

They protect the soft body that is contected to the rock or wood with a stalk or pendulum a elongation of the body. Whelks sea stars some fish and some shorebirds. The second antennae are absent.

Their predators include worms marine snails eg. Barnacles are exclusively marine and tend to live in shallow and tidal waters typically in erosive settings. For barnacles this presents no real problem.

Barnacles have a few things going for them in terms of reproductive flexibility.

Crustacea Glossary Definitions