This colony consists of a central polyp specialized in feeding (the
gastrozooid), above which there is a circular floater.
In the laboratory, small pieces of tissue, or explants, including four or five
gastrozooids were excised with a scalpel and transferred with watchmaker's forceps to plain glass microscope slides (7.64 cm X 3.82 cm, 1.1-1.3 mm thick).
At the same time, we also established clonal explants of the parental colonies by excising with a scalpel a small section of ectodermal mat containing several feeding polyps (
gastrozooids) from the stock colonies on the hermit crab shells (Ivker 1972).