| Etymology:- From the Greek Gnathos for jaw and stoma for mouth. |
Characteristics of Gnathostomula:- 1)Bilaterally symmetrical, and vermiform. 2)Body has more than two cell layers, tissues and organs. 3)Body contains no internal cavity. 4)Body possesses a blind ending gut, i.e. no anus. 5)Possesses simple protonephridia. 6)Has a diffuse epidermal nervous system. 7)Has a muscular pharynx with paired jaws and a basal plate. 8)Reproduction sexual, most if not all species hermaphroditic. 9)Feed on bacteria, fungi and protists. 10)All live in marine environments. |
The Gnathostomula are a small phylum of small marine worms, most of the 80 species known to science are between 0.3 and 1.0 mm long. Though they can be extremely common in marine sediments, as many as 600 000 per cubic metre have been counted they were only first described to science in 1956. This is because they tend to cling tightly to grains of sand and because they are easily killed in attempting to remove them from the sand grains, also their bodies break up very quickly after death. all this has made studying them quite difficult and not an awful lot is known about them.
They have a ciliated body surface and can either swim by flexing their whole body or move across surfaces by ciliary beating. They are very basic, acoelomate animals with a blind ending gut, (they have a mouth but no anus), two simple protonephridia and no circulatory or gaseous exchange organs. They feed on bacteria, protists and fungi that they find while moving through the marine sediments they live in.
Gnathostomulids are hermaphroditic with only a single ovary. In some species at least sperm are injected straight through the body wall, though others have a vagina. the large eggs develop one at a time, fertilisation is internal, sperm being stored in special sac called a 'bursa' until needed. The eggs leave the body by bursting out through the adults body wall, healing of the adult is quick and there is no larval stage, the egg hatching directly into a small but adult gnathostomulid. Individuals go through one or more feeding but non-reproductive stages followed by a non-feeding but reproductive stage in their lives, and in some species at least it may take a year to complete a life cycle.
Genera
Austrognatharia
Gnathostomaria
Gnathostomula
Haplognathia
Mesognatharia
Nanognathia
Onychognathia
Problognathia
Semaeognathia
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| These pages are here free for you to use, I would like to keep them that way, however making and running this site, and the other sites I am currently making or have made, on Birds, Mammals, Insects and Fish and Bacteria as well as all the other invertebrates costs money. There are several simple ways you can help. The first is by using the search engine here, that way you make me 2 or 3 cents a time, not a lot but it adds up.
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