Swimming anemone, Spotted anemone

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Onglets

Description

Distinguishing features

This anemone has a soft, tubular body with smooth, marbled skin. Its colouring varies widely. Tentacles surround its mouth, which is located on the top of its body. The underside of its body is a sucker foot.

Reproduction

Anemones are able to reproduce asexually by longitudinal fission, budding or fragmentation. They also reproduce sexually, by producing male and female gametes. The young anemones are free-swimming larvae that disperse before attaching themselves to a stable surface.

Diet

They mainly eat small animals such as plankton and amphipods that they catch and paralyze with their poison-tipped tentacles. Adult anemones do not move in order to feed.

Predators

Their enemies are mainly nudibranches

Habitat

They live in cold salt water, at depths of about 15 m, over rocky bottoms. They are found in the estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the Atlantic coast in Labrador and Maine.

Ecology, behaviour

Anemones appeared long before the dinosaurs and are still with us. They are found in warm and cold seas around the globe. These animals' survival for hundreds of millions of years attests to their successful adaptation.

French name

Anémone marbrée

Scientific name

Stomphia coccinea

Phylum

Cnidaria (coelenterata)

Class

Anthozoa

Order

Actiniaria

Family

Actinostolidae

Size

Height: 12.5 cm; diameter: 7 cm

Status

Common species

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