Linkten

The Linkten is a huge, 2-mm colony of simply multicellular organisms. To the unaided eye, it looks like a 2-mm bluish-green blob of jelly, with a darker meshwork visible under a weak microscope setting. This network is formed from cells connecting link extensions, derived from the distinct Carpotestan bait tentacles.

In contrast to its relatives, who live like carpets on the seafloor or like webs between stones or hanging roots, Linkten colonies float in the water like tiny, American football-shaped fishing nets. On the outer corners of a Linkten cluster's rectangular cells are specialized organelles which make chemicals for slime. (mucus) The sticky, strand-reinforced slime spreads along their cell membranes in a sort of 'wing', making it easier to catch various microscopic organisms or spores, such as Sea Rupee spores.

When an organism is caught on a strand in the slime, specialized organelles just below the cell membranes "reel in" the strand, bringing it closer to the cell membrane. Anything trapped in the mucus is slowly digested on contact with the cell membrane, or digested quickly if caught on a link extension.

Every six to eight hours, a mucus wing becomes so clogged as to weigh the colony down and become difficult to reel in. The mucus wing is then discarded, and a Linkten cluster creates another.

Despite their small size (about 140 micrometers in length), the mucus wings have a lot of nutrition in a small space. They can get even heavier as they float away, collecting more microorganisms or microscopic fragments. Many mucus wings are consumed in the epipelagic, sunlit zone of the ocean. However, if they sink down and clump together, they can form barely visible specks of 'marine snow', clusters of floating organic matter.

Discarded mucus wings from Linktens provide a small but important source of food to filter-feeding organisms of the twilight zone environments near polar waters.