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Digestive System: Balanoglossus Gigas

Acorn worms are marine animals that range in size from 3.5 to over 4 feet long. They have a three-part body consisting of a head-like proboscis, a collar behind it, and a long trunk. They breathe by drawing water in through their mouth and out through gill slits. They have an open circulatory system with blood vessels and a heart-like structure in their collar. Acorn worms live in U-shaped burrows and feed by ingesting sediment or collecting particles from water, making them deposit or suspension feeders.

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225 views3 pages

Digestive System: Balanoglossus Gigas

Acorn worms are marine animals that range in size from 3.5 to over 4 feet long. They have a three-part body consisting of a head-like proboscis, a collar behind it, and a long trunk. They breathe by drawing water in through their mouth and out through gill slits. They have an open circulatory system with blood vessels and a heart-like structure in their collar. Acorn worms live in U-shaped burrows and feed by ingesting sediment or collecting particles from water, making them deposit or suspension feeders.

Uploaded by

Jayashree Ravishankar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Most acorn worms range from 9 to 45 centimetres (3.

5 to 18 in) in length, with the largest


species, Balanoglossus gigas, reaching 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) or more. The body is made up of
three main parts: an acorn-shaped proboscis, a short fleshy collar that lies behind it, and a
long, worm-like trunk. The creature's mouth is located at the collar behind the proboscis.[2]

The skin is covered with cilia as well as glands that secrete mucus. Some produce a bromide
compound that gives them a medicinal smell and might protect them from bacteria and
predators. Acorn worms move only sluggishly, using ciliary action and peristalsis of the
proboscis.[2]

[edit] Digestive system

Many acorn worms are detritus feeders, eating sand or mud and extracting organic detritus.
Others feed on organic material suspended in the water, which they can trap in the mucus
covering their proboscis and carry to the mouth using the cilia. A groove lined with cilia lies
just in front of the mouth and may allow the animal to taste the incoming water before
swallowing it.[2]

The mouth cavity is tubular, with a narrow diverticulum or stomochord extending up into the
proboscis. This diverticulum was once thought to be homologous with the notochord of
chordates, hence the name "hemichordate" for the phylum. The mouth opens posteriorly into
a pharynx with a row of gill slits along either side. The remainder of the digestive system
consists of an oesophagus and intestine; there is no stomach.[2]

In some families there are openings in the dorsal surface of the oesophagus connecting to the
external surface, through which water from the food can be squeezed, helping to concentrate
it. Digestion occurs in the intestine, with food material being pulled through by cilia, rather
than by muscular action.[2]

Acorn worms breathe by drawing in oxygenated water through their mouth. The water then
flows out the animal's gills which are on its trunk. Thus, the acorn worm breathes about the
same way as fish.

Circulatory system

Acorn worms have an open circulatory system, in which the blood flows through the tissues
sinuses. A dorsal blood vessel in the mesentery above the gut and delivers blood to a sinus in
the collar that contains a muscular sac acting as a heart. Unlike the hearts of most other
animals, however, this structure is a closed fluid-filled vesicle whose interior does not
connect directly to the blood system. None the less, it does regularly pulsate, helping to push
blood through the surrounding sinuses.[2]

From the central sinus in the collar, blood flows to a complex series of sinuses and peritoneal
folds in the proboscis. This set of structures is referred to as a glomerulus and may have an
excretory function, since acorn worms otherwise have no defined excretory system. From the
proboscis, blood flows into a single blood vessel running underneath the digestive tract, from
which smaller sinuses supply blood to the trunk, and back into the dorsal vessel.[2]

The blood of acorn worms is colourless and acellular.[2]

[edit] Respiratory system

Acorn worms continually form new gill slits as they grow in size, with some older individuals
having more than a hundred on each side. Each slit consists of a branchial chamber opening
to the pharynx through a U-shaped cleft and to the exterior through a dorso-lateral pore (see
diagram below). Cilia push water through the slits, maintaining a constant flow. The tissues
surrounding the slits are well supplied with blood sinuses.[2]

[edit] Nervous system

A plexus of nerves lies underneath the skin, and is concentrated into both dorsal and ventral
nerve cords. While the ventral cord runs only as far as the collar, the dorsal cord reaches into
the proboscis, and is partially separated from the epidermis in that region. This part of the
dorsal nerve cord is often hollow, and may well be homologous with the brain of vertebrates.
In acorn worms, it seems to be primarily involved with coordinating muscular action of the
body during burrowing and crawling

Acorn worms have no eyes, ears or other special sense organs, except for the ciliary organ in
front of the mouth, which appears to be involved in taste. There are, however, numerous
nerve endings throughout the skin

Similarities to chordates

Acorn worms are considered more highly specialised and advanced than other similarly
shaped worm-like creatures. They have a circulatory system with a heart that also functions
as a kidney. Acorn worms have gill-like structures that they use for breathing, similar to the
gills of primitive fish. Therefore, acorn worms are sometimes said to be a link between
classical invertebrates and vertebrates. Some also have a postanal tail which sometimes
shows weak signs of segmentation. An interesting trait is that its three-section body plan is no
longer present in the vertebrates, except for the anatomy of the frontal neural tube, later
developed into a brain which is divided into three main parts. This means some of the
original anatomy of the early chordate ancestors is still present even if it is not always visible.

One theory is that the three-part body originates from an early common ancestor of all the
deuterostomes, and maybe even from a common bilateral ancestor of both the deuterostomes
and protostomes.

Lifestyle
Acorn worms are rarely seen by humans because of their lifestyle. They live in U-shaped
burrows on the sea-bed, from the shoreline down to a depth of 10,000 ft. (3,050 m). The
worms lie there with the proboscis sticking out of one opening in the burrow. Acorn worms
are generally slow burrowers.
To obtain food, many acorn worms swallow sand or mud that contains organic matter and
microorganisms in the manner of earthworms (this is known as deposit feeding). At low tide,
they stick out their rear ends at the surface and excrete coils of processed sediments (casts).

Another method that some acorn worms use to obtain food is to collect suspended particles of
organic matter and microbes from the water. This is known as suspension feeding.

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