When we go through samples and identify bryozoans, we occasionally find some very strange species. Uschakovia gorbunovi is one of these. It is actually the only species belonging to the genus Uschakovia in the world (that we know of), and it is always fun to find specimens of this weird creature.
There are several interesting aspects of Uschakovia gorbunovi. Firstly, the colony is in a way divided in two, where the zooids at the bottom of the colony look different than the zooids further up (unfortunately, you can't see this in the pictures here). The zooids in the upper part of the colony have long "spines", while this is missing in the zooids further down.
No ovicells (external brood chambers) have been observed so far, so how the species reproduces is, as far as I know, not very well known (if at all).
