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coenecium
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coenecium

zoology
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The term "coenoecium" refers to the common, often chitinous or calcareous, investment that covers a bryozoan colony. Bryozoans are small aquatic invertebrates that live in colonies. The coenoecium serves as a protective outer layer for the individual zooids (the individual animals within the colony).1

It is important to distinguish this from "coenocyte," which is a multinucleate mass of protoplasm resulting from nuclear divisions without cell fission, or an organism composed of such a structure.2

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2 Britannica Sources
  1. coenoecium
  2. coenocyte

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