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Symbion

Other Invertebrates

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Symbion is a genus of commensal aquatic animals, less than half a millimeter wide, found living attached to the mouthparts of cold-water lobsters. Its members have sac-like bodies and take three distinctly different forms across the two stages of their life cycle. They appeared so different from other animals that they were placed in their own phylum, Cycliophora, also called the wheel wearers, shortly after their discovery in 1995, the first new multicelled-animal phylum described since Loricifera in 1983.

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