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How does it look like?
Adherent base like a suction cup, it has a column up to 20 centimeters long, smooth, not divided into regions and funnel-shaped. It is yellowish-brown in color and the column is sometimes streaked with white or blue. The oral disc, which is usually marked by bluish or greenish lines radiating from the mouth (due to the presence of symbiont algae), is surrounded by about 100 long and strong whitish tentacles that can retract and reach about 6 cm (max. 15 cm) in length, with sharp ends. The tentacles are of different sizes and form circles.
Where does it live?
It lives in rocks, cavities, crevices, among algae,... It lives in the sublittoral, up to 30 meters deep or in shallower areas under rocks. It is found in the Mediterranean and in the eastern Atlantic, from the English Channel to West Africa.
How does it feed?
It extends its tentacles to capture small fish, crustaceans and other edible particles floating in the water.
How does it reproduce?
It has separate sexes, it is oviparous. It can also have asexual reproduction by division in two of the column.
Is a confusion possible?
It can be confused with Aiptasia diaphana whose shape is very similar but much smaller (about 3 cm in diameter). This one can form carpets in shallow waters and settles preferably in turbid waters of harbors and lagoons. Another species with which it has been confused is Anemonia viridis, but this one has bright green tentacles.
Curiosities
· It can often be found on wood or wooden surfecaes underwater.
· If disturbed it emits white filaments (aconctios). In case of aggression it can expel these aconctios, which are viscous filaments, stinging and visible to the naked eye, through its tentacles.
Taxonomy
Phylum: Cnidaria, Classe: Anthozoa, Ordre: Actinaria, Família: Aiptasiidae, Genus: Aiptasia |
