Bryozoa

The freshwater bryozoan Lophopus crystallinus (Pallas, 1768) Phylactolaemata > Plumatellida > Lophopodidae image Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike, © Natural History Museum, London, via EOL

Bryozoa are a phylum of common, small, colonial, mostly marine but sometimnes freshwater, often encrusting, lophotrochozoans. Like brachiopods they possess a fringe of complex hollow feeding tentacles called a lophophore. Because of this they are generally grouped together with brachiopods and phoronids on morphological grounds, but molecular phylogeny tends to place them in a more basal position. Their position being for this reason unresolved and controversial , they are for the time being interpreted as general lophotrochozoa