What excatly is the difference between a zooid in a colonial organism and an organ in a non-colonial one?

Submitted by estradas_del_paraiso t3_11rjl3r in askscience

I've been hearing a lot about "colonial organisms" and how cool they are because "Oh, it's like an animal made up of lots of tiny animals." And I don't understand, isn't that EVERY animal?

Colonial animals are made up of "zooids". A zooid is a multicellular, individual organism but each zooid has a specialized function and could not survive were it to be separated from the colony.

Isn't that exactly what an organ is? An organ is a multicellular, self-contained entity within an animal. An organ performs a specialized function within the body. An organ could not survive were it to be separated from the main body.

So what distinguishes the two? Is it because colonial organism don't have brains so their organs are said to act independently?

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mabolle t1_jc9wnom wrote

Here's a good resource on the subject, from the lab of Casey Dunn, a siphonophore researcher.

Your argument is solid; in functional terms, the zooids in a colonial organism can be considered organs in an integrated body. The reason why we call these organisms "colonial" is actually a bit abstract: it has to do with the evolutionary/developmental history of these organisms.

You know the concept of homology? Like how your hand is homologous to a dolphin flipper, or the wing of a bat? All three organs can trace their history back to an original forelimb in the shared mammalian ancestor of all three animals. This is the key to understanding the definition of zooids, too. Each zooid in a colonial organism is homologous to the entire body of an individual in related, non-colonial organisms. For example, the reproductive zooid of a Portuguese man o' war is homologous to the entire body of a jellyfish.

It's a bit as if an offshoot population of humans evolved into grotesque creatures made up of hundreds of little human bodies, linked together, performing different tasks. Functionally, each of those little bodies can be viewed as just an organ — but looking at it from a perspective of homology, you've got a colonial organisms made out of human-shaped zooids.

(And, as noted in the linked text, all animals can be viewed as colonial in this sense, because each of our cells is homologous to the entire body of one of our single-celled ancestors.)

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foodtower t1_jcaeyua wrote

Are all zooids in an organism genetically identical (or close enough) like somatic cells in a body are? Is their reproduction more similar to independent animals, or to cells?

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mabolle t1_jcaj79h wrote

Yes, they're typically genetically identical. Typically a colonial organism begins its life as a single embryo, which is divided up as it develops, budding off new zooids that remain semi-attached (sharing body fluids, nutrients, etc.) but develop independently from that point on.

New zooids being created through budding is a homologous process to asexual reproduction through budding in non-colonial organisms. For example, the zooids in a coral colony are born through budding from an adjacent zooid; corals are related to sea anemones, many of which use the same process to reproduce. The main difference is simply that in sea anemones the new polyp breaks off and leads a completely independent life, whereas in corals the new polyp stays semi-attached and acts as a zooid.

This is somewhat analogous to how cells — both those in your body, and those in single-celled organisms like bacteria — reproduce by splitting apart, but cell division and whole-body budding are two separate processes in an evolutionary perspective.

Colonial organisms can often reproduce sexually, too, but at the whole-colony level, not at the zooid level. In other words, zooids within a colony do not have babies with one another that later join the same colony (there is no such thing as a zooid "joining" a colony, other than by budding); rather, reproductive zooids release sperm and eggs, which meet and become an embryo, and that embryo becomes an entirely new colony, as described above.

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estradas_del_paraiso OP t1_jcb56gw wrote

Ok, so the nomenclature has less to do with the way zooids interact and more to do with their evolutionary history.

That might be oversimplifying things, but I feel like I understand a bit more.

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cntrd t1_jc99rh5 wrote

One of the main differences I know of is that zooids are capable of independent movement within the larger organism. blastogenesis or budding is an asexual reproduction process where cell division is repeated at a specific site and these buds develop into new individuals that are still connected to the parent until fully mature. Not sure if this answers your question fully.

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