NEMATOMORPHA

This article appears in Volume V19, Page 363 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NAN-NEW

NEMATOMORPHA . This zoological group includes Gordian worms which are found swimming in an undulatory manner or coiling round water-weeds in ponds and puddles, or knotted together in an apparently inextricable coil. They may he several inches in length and are no thicker than a piece of whip-cord.
The male is distinguishable from the female by the presence of a fork at the posterior end of the

body

BODY

. The

body

BODY

is covered by a cuticle which is sculptured and the various markings are of systematic importance: it is secreted by a hypodermis which also includes nerve-cells and some gland-cells. In the adult aquatic stage the alimentary canal shows signs of degeneration, and it seems probable that in this stage Gordian worms take no food. The mouth is terminal or subterminal; there is a weak sucking pharynx situated behind the brain, and a long intestine lying along the medio-ventral body-cavity; it ends in a cloaca which receives the vasa deferentia in the male. There is a single unsegmented nerve-cord which runs along the ventral middle line .and enlarges posteriorly into a caudal ganglion and anteriorly in a ganglion, the brain, which is not supra-oesophageal. The peripheral nervous system is minutely described by T, H. Montgomery. There is a median eye on the head.
A,a,Female Heterodera schachtii Schmidt, breaking through the epidermis of a root; the head is still embedded in the parenchyma of the root.
B, a, larvae boring their way into a root; 6, larva of the immobile kind surrounded by the old skin, living as an ectoparasite on the outside of the root. (From Strubell.)
B, First motile larva.
C, Second immovable parasitic larva casting its skin.
D, A female with one half of the body-

wall

WALL (O. Eng. weal, weall, Mid. Eng. wal, wane, adapted from Lat. vallum, rampart; the
original
- ORIGINAL
O. Eng. word for a wall was wag or tenth)
WALL, RICHARD (1694-1778)

taken away to show the coiling generative organs.
a, Boring apparatus.
b, Oesophageal bulb.
c, Excretory pore.
d, Alimentary canal.
e, Anus.
f, Ovary.
E, A male shortly before casting its larval skin.
and only in the middle, region of the body are there any. body-
cavities, the space within the body being usually filled up with
parenchyma. There are four closed spaces of the nature of
body-cavities, two lateral and a dorso-median and a ventro-
median. Into the former the ovaries project, though the lumen
of the lateral body-cavity is quite shut off from the lumina of the ovaries or uteri. In the adult male the lateral body-cavities are absent. A curious duct with lateral branches termed the supra-intestinal organ lies above the intestine in the female. There are two

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of ovaries extending through a large part of the body and accompanied by two uteri; the latter open by two oviducts which debouch into an atrium which also receives the intestine and a single receptaculum seminis, and is continued back-ward as the cloaca; this opens posteriorly. The ovaries are epithelial sacs which open into the uteri. The paired testes extend through the greater part of the body and end in two vasa deferentia which unite with the intestine to form a cloaca.
From

Cambridge

Natural The eggs are laid in the

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger. springer, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

as a rule,
History, vol. ii., "Worms,"
&c., by permission of Mac- and after about a

week

WEEK (from A.S. wicu, Germanic *wikon, probably=
change
- CHANGE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. cambium, cambiare, to barter; the ultimate derivation is probably from the root which appears in the Gr. 冠 urmu', to bend)
, turn)

they give rise to a
millan & Co., Ltd.
F IG. 3.Tarsal

joint

JOINT (through Fr. from Lat. junctum, jungere, to join)

minute, ringed larva with a protrusible of an Ephemerid larva boring apparatus corii,isting of three into which two Gordius chitinous rods. By the aid o; this the larvae, (a,a) have larva makes its way into the soft body penetrated. Magnified. of some

insect

INSECT

larva, Ephemerids, Chiro-
nomids, or even of Molluscs, and encysts in the muscles or fat body. The

insect

INSECT

, which may have become an imago with the Gordian larva still in it, is then eaten by a carnivorous insect or by a fish, and the contained Gordian larva becomes elongate and mature in its second host. After a year or more this larva emerges into the water and commences to reproduce.
The unexpected occurrence of these worms in pools and puddles, often in great numbers, has given rise to myths about showers of worms. They occasionally make their way into the human stomach with the drinking-water and are vomited; but this is a case of pseudo-parasitismthey are no true parasite of man.
There are a considerable number of species divided among the four genera: Gordius, Paragordius, Chordodes and Parachordodes; the last, a genus of Camerano's, is looked upon with some doubt by Montgomery. A free swimming marine form with longitudinal rows of bristles, known as Nectonema A. E. Verrill, may also come here, but at present its life-history is unknown. The Nematomorpha form an isolated group; at first sight they seem to be connected with the Nematoda, but in reality their only common feature is the tubular genitalia opening into a cloaca, and it seems at present363
impossible to connect them with the Annelida. Until more is known it seems wisest to look upon them as an isolated assemblage of animals with no' near affinities to any of the great phyla.

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