| Symbion | |
|---|---|
| |
| Symbion pandora | |
| |
| Symbion americanus | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Superphylum: | Lophotrochozoa |
| Phylum: | Cycliophora Funch & Kristensen, 1995 |
| Class: | Eucycliophora Funch & Kristensen, 1995 |
| Order: | Symbiida Funch & Kristensen, 1995 |
| Family: | Symbiidae Funch & Kristensen, 1995 |
| Genus: | Symbion Funch & Kristensen, 1995 |
| Species | |
| |
Symbion is a genus of commensal aquatic animals, less than 0.5 mm wide, found living attached to the mouthparts of cold-water lobsters. They have sac-like bodies, and three distinctly different forms in different parts of their two-stage life-cycle. They appear so different from other animals that they were assigned their own, new phylum Cycliophora shortly after they were discovered in 1995.[1] This was the first new phylum of multicelled organism to be discovered since the Loricifera in 1983.
- ^ Marshall, Michael (28 April 2010). "Zoologger: The most bizarre life story on Earth?". New Scientist. Retrieved 19 November 2018.
... In 1995, Peter Funch and Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen, both then at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, discovered an animal so unlike any other that a new phylum – Cycliophora – had to be created just for it. ...