Bryozoans
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 280 Bryozoan specimens. These date from 1876 to 2007. This collection contains approximately 200 dried specimens, a further 60 specimens in spirit and around 20 microscope slides of British bryozoans. The majority of the dried specimens, ranging from sea mats washed up on beaches to specimens carefully pressed between sheets of glass, come from the 1902 Robertson collection from the UK, the 1905 and 1907 Alexander Gray collections from New Zealand and the 2002 Babcock collection from all around the world. Many of the specimens in spirit were collected by scuba divers conducting marine surveys around Scotland in the 1980s, although there are also a few from the seas around New Zealand that were collected in the early 20th century. Bryozoans, also known as polyzoans, sea mats or ectoprocts, are tiny colonial aquatic animals. They are filter-feeders and an important source of food for many larger animals. There are around 5,000 species found in all types of aquatic habitats all around the world.
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