Barnacle

Senegal 1968Falkland Islands 1994
Littoral Stalked Barnacle
Pollicipes mitella
(Scalpellidae)
Pelagic Gooseneck Barnacle
Lepas sp.
(Scalpellidae)


A barnacle is an adherence animal having a Mount Fuji-shaped calcic husk. The size is several centimeters from several millimeters. It is classified in Crustacea Sessilia. It was thought that a barnacle was a mollusk same as shellfishs until the early 19th century. However, it was found to hatch as a freely natans nauplius larva as well as the Crustacea such as a shrimp, the crab by J.V. Thompson in 1829, and it came to be classified in Crustacea, and Charles Darwin performed a systematic study of the rock barnacle at the mid-19th century and built the taxonomic basics of rock barnacle.

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