A nutritive zooid (individual animal unit) in a colonial organism like a hydroid, responsible for feeding the entire colony.
From Greek 'gaster' (belly/stomach) + 'zōon' (animal) + '-oid' (resembling). Coined in 19th-century zoology to describe the feeding polyps in colonial marine animals.
Imagine an apartment building where only certain residents cook and share food with everyone else—that's basically how colonial sea creatures work, with specialized gasterozooids doing all the feeding for thousands of identical clones!
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