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iNat·53634FamilyAnimalia841 field observations
  1. Animals
  2. ›Arthropods
  3. ›Crustaceans
  4. ›Typical Crustaceans
  5. ›Barnacles and Copepods
  6. ›Barnacles and Allies
  7. ›Barnacles
  8. ›Normal Barnacles
  9. ›Thoracican Barnacles
  10. ›Symmetrical Sessile Barnacles
  11. ›Coronuloidea
Whale Barnacles
Plate 1 of 5. (c) Alejandro Dauguet, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Alejandro Dauguet · via iNaturalist

Whale Barnacles

Coronulidae

Whale barnacles are barnacles belonging to the family Coronulidae. Whale barnacles attach themselves to the bodies of baleen whales during the barnacles' free-swimming larval stage. Some sources describe the relationship as an example of obligate commensalism, as when the barnacles neither harm, but benefit by being un harmed by enemies like killer whales (orcas). Others describe the relationship as parasitic. The relationship is parasitic when whales are harmed by the barnacles. Such harm occurs when heavy...

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8 branches of this family, most-observed first

Coronula

genusCoronula

Cryptolepas

genusCryptolepas

Xenobalanus

genusXenobalanus

Platylepas

genusPlatylepas

Tubicinella

genusTubicinella

Cylindrolepas

genusCylindrolepas

Cetopirus

genusCetopirus

Chelolepas

genusChelolepas

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Where it lives

Recorded sightings

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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.

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In the stacks

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Every page naming Coronulidae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →

This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 53634.