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1) Interesting barnacle facts: In order to mate, barnacles have to settle within a penis-length of each other as they live glued to a rock and so they cannot move once they have settled from the plankton. https://twitter.com/PlanktonPundit/status/1288169352316026888
2) Even though barnacles have some of the longest penises relative to their body size in the animal kingdon, the cyprid larva has to find a good place to settle from the plankton so it is near to other barnacles so it can mate.
3) The larvae find out where to settle by 'sniffing' out other barnacles. Along with others I helped find out how they do this. They use a protein we called the Settlement-Inducing Protein Complex (SIPC), an α-2 macroglobulin-like protein. https://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14396
4) The cyprid larva in the plankton smells out adult barnacles on rocks, lands on the rock surface and then walks around on its antennules to find the best place to live next to another barnacle.
5) The Settlement-Inducing Protein Complex is found in larval and adult barnacles, suggesting it may be the cue for gregarious settlement https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2006.3649
6) And may suggest why smelly-feet are not always a bad thing
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2006.0503
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2006.0503
