| Waminoa brickneri | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Xenacoelomorpha |
| Order: | Acoela |
| Family: | Convolutidae |
| Genus: | Waminoa |
| Species: | W. brickneri |
| Binomial name | |
| Waminoa brickneri (Ogunlana, Hooge, Tekle, Benayahu, Barneah & Tyler, 2005) | |
Waminoa brickneri [1] [2] is a newly discovered acoel species from the coral reefs near Eilat (Red Sea) [3] and the second described species in the genus (the first is Waminoa litus ).
Waminoa brickneri is discoid to obcordate in shape, flat, 3–4 mm in diameter and 1 mm thick. [3] Its bronze color with small white speckles is derived from the abundant dinoflagellate endosymbionts and the scattered white pigment spots. There are two distinct types of dinoflagellate endosymbionts that lay scattered throughout the parenchyma of the animal: small symbionts of the genus Symbiodinium [4] and larger symbionts of the genus Amphidinium . [5]
The epidermis is transparent, fully ciliated, and glandulous. The dorsal body wall and lateral sides are especially abundant with rhabdoid glands, while the ventral body wall is abundant with mucous glands; the mucous glands also occur scattered in the dorsal body wall, but there are no rhabdoid glands on the ventral side. [3]
The mouth is ventrally located, somewhere in the posterior third of the body length, and opens directly into the digestive syncytium. [3] Newly hatched juveniles possess a statocyst and paired eyes but mature individuals lack both. They also lack a frontal organ. The brain is bilobed and lies just beneath the epidermis close behind the anterior tip of the body; the two main masses consist of a central neuropile and nucleated rind and are connected by a short medial commissure. [3]
Like other acoelomorphs, Waminoa brickneri is a simultaneous hermaphrodite. [3] The reproductive organs produce a slightly thickened ridge medially in the terminal quarter of the body. A pair of ventrally situated ovaries extends from about the second quarter of the body length posteriorly behind the mouth. The female pore is prominent and opens to a ciliated vagina located on the ventral body wall immediately anterior to the male gonadopore. Dorsally and laterally to the ovaries lies a pair of testes, which lead posteriorly to the seminal vesicle. The seminal vesicle, which lies just in front of the posterior notch in the body margin, is most prominent, and appears white from contained sperm. It is well-developed and walled by thin, loosely concentric muscles and reaches to a penis papilla. Flanking the seminal vesicle are prominent false seminal vesicles continuous with the tracts of sperm descending from the testes. There is a seminal bursa with 2 or more (2–8) bursal nozzles. Sperm cells are elongated and biflagellate. [6]
Waminoa brickneri is an epizoic organism living on corals in the Gulf of Eilat. [5] It occurs in groups of non-overlapping individuals, causing the corals it inhabits to appear spotted. It has been detected on 13 species of stony corals, and on one species of soft coral. It can be found at depths of 2 to 50 meters.
The presence of Waminoa species on live corals brought about several hypotheses about the nature of this coral-acoel association, one of which was that the acoels feed on the coral's mucus. A recent study by Naumann et al. (2010) corroborated this hypothesis. [7]
The seminal vesicles, are a pair of two coiled tubular glands that lie behind the urinary bladder of some male mammals. They secrete fluid that partly composes the semen.
The ejaculatory ducts are paired structures in male anatomy. Each ejaculatory duct is formed by the union of the vas deferens with the duct of the seminal vesicle. They pass through the prostate, and open into the urethra at the seminal colliculus. During ejaculation, semen passes through the prostate gland, enters the urethra and exits the body via the urinary meatus.
The Turbellaria are one of the traditional sub-divisions of the phylum Platyhelminthes (flatworms), and include all the sub-groups that are not exclusively parasitic. There are about 4,500 species, which range from 1 mm (0.039 in) to large freshwater forms more than 500 mm (20 in) long or terrestrial species like Bipalium kewense which can reach 600 mm (24 in) in length. All the larger forms are flat with ribbon-like or leaf-like shapes, since their lack of respiratory and circulatory systems means that they have to rely on diffusion for internal transport of metabolites. However, many of the smaller forms are round in cross section. Most are predators, and all live in water or in moist terrestrial environments. Most forms reproduce sexually and with few exceptions all are simultaneous hermaphrodites.
Acoelomorpha is a subphylum of very simple and small soft-bodied animals with planula-like features which live in marine or brackish waters. They usually live between grains of sediment, swimming as plankton, or crawling on other organisms, such as algae and corals. With the exception of two acoel freshwater species, all known Acoelomorphs are marine.
Symsagittifera roscoffensis, also called the Roscoff worm, the mint-sauce worm, or the shilly-shally worm, is a marine flatworm belonging to the phylum of Xenacoelomorpha. The origin and nature of the green color of this worm stimulated the curiosity of zoologists early on. It is due to the partnership between the animal and a green micro-algae, the species Tetraselmis convolutae, hosted under its epidermis. It is the photosynthetic activity of the micro-algae in hospite that provides the essential nutrients for the worm. This partnership is called photosymbiosis, from "photo", "light", and symbiosis "who lives with". These photosynthetic marine animals live in colonies on the tidal zone.
Convolutidae is a family of acoels. It contains more than a third of all known acoel species.
Acoela, or the acoels, is an order of small and simple invertebrates in the subphylum Acoelomorpha of phylum Xenacoelomorpha, a deep branching bilaterian group of animals, which resemble flatworms. Historically they were treated as an order of turbellarian flatworms.
Tomigerus clausus is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Odontostomidae.
The reproductive system of gastropods varies greatly from one group to another within this very large and diverse taxonomic class of animals. Their reproductive strategies also vary greatly, see Mating of gastropods.
Male accessory glands (MAG) in humans are the seminal vesicles, prostate gland, and the bulbourethral glands . In insects, male accessory glands produce products that mix with the sperm to protect and preserve them, including seminal fluid proteins. Some insecticides can induce an increase in the protein content of the male accessory glands of certain types of insects. This has the unintended effect of increasing the number of offspring they produce.
A trophosome is a highly vascularised organ found in some animals that houses symbiotic bacteria that provide food for their host. Trophosomes are located in the coelomic cavity in the vestimentiferan tube worms and in symbiotic flatworms of the genus Paracatenula.
Most insects reproduce oviparously, i.e. by laying eggs. The eggs are produced by the female in a pair of ovaries. Sperm, produced by the male in one testis or more commonly two, is transmitted to the female during mating by means of external genitalia. The sperm is stored within the female in one or more spermathecae. At the time of fertilization, the eggs travel along oviducts to be fertilized by the sperm and are then expelled from the body ("laid"), in most cases via an ovipositor.
Dendronephthya hemprichi is a common soft coral found from Red Sea to Western Pacific. It is usually pink or orange with transparent trunk and it grows up to 70 cm. It exists at 30° N latitude. The smallest unit of this coral, like all other corals, is a polyp. This particular species of the Dendronephthya has the ability to reproduce sexually and asexually through broadcast spawning and clonal propagation, respectively.
The reproductive system of planarians is broadly similar among different families, although the associated structures can vary in complexity.
Pseudorhabdosynochus americanus is a diplectanid monogenean parasitic on the gills of groupers. It was described as Diplectanum americanum by Price in 1937 and transferred to the genus Pseudorhabdosynochus by Kritsky and Beverley-Burton in 1986. The species was redescribed by Kritsky, Bakenhaster and Adams in 2015.
Pseudorhabdosynochus yucatanensis is a diplectanid monogenean parasitic on the gills of the Red grouper, Epinephelus morio. It was described by Vidal-Martínez, Aguirre-Macedo & Mendoza-Franco in 1997 and redescribed by Kritsky, Bakenhaster and Adams in 2015.
Pseudorhabdosynochus kritskyi is a diplectanid monogenean parasitic on the gills of the gag, Mycteroperca microlepis. The species has been described by Dyer, Williams and Bunkley-Williams in 1995 and redescribed successively by Yang, Gibson and Zeng in 2005 and by Kritsky, Bakenhaster and Adams in 2015. The name of the species honours the American parasitologist Delane C. Kritsky.
Bonelliidae is a family of marine worms noted for being sexually dimorphic, with males being tiny in comparison with the females. They occupy burrows in the seabed in many parts of the world's oceans, often at great depths.
Waminoa is a genus of acoels which are epizoic on living corals, using the coral's mucus as a source of food. Unusually, these acoels harbor two genera of endosymbiotic dinoflagellates: Symbiodinium and Amphidinium; it is not typical for two different genera of dinoflagellates to coexist in a single host. Waminoa's host coral may also contain dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium but not Amphidinium.
Waminoa litus is a species of dinoflagellate-bearing acoels which are epizoic on living corals. This species is unique in that it transmits its endosymbiotic dinoflagellates (zooxanthellae) vertically via eggs, regardless of the heterogeneity of the zooxanthellae. Two dinoflagellate genera have been found to simultaneously live in the parenchyma of W. litus: Symbiodinium and Amphidinium.