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Other than respiration, these filaments have other functions including the exchange of ions, water, acids, and ammonia. [1] [2] Fish respire by pulling oxygen-rich water through their mouths and pumping it over their gills. Within the gill filaments, capillary blood flows in the opposite direction to the water, causing countercurrent exchange ...
The pulmonates have lost their gills [1] and adapted the mantle cavity into a pallial lung. The lung has a single opening on the right side, called the pneumostome, which either remains permanently open, or opens and closes as the animal breathes. The roof of the lung is highly vascularised, and it is through this surface that gas exchange occurs.
A ctenidium is a respiratory organ or gill which is found in many molluscs. This structure exists in bivalves , cephalopods , polyplacophorans (chitons), and in aquatic gastropods such as freshwater snails and marine snails . [ 1 ]
Sea slugs respire through a gill (or ctenidium). Aquatic respiration is the process whereby an aquatic organism exchanges respiratory gases with water, obtaining oxygen from oxygen dissolved in water and excreting carbon dioxide and some other metabolic waste products into the water.
A current of water is maintained through the gills for gas exchange, and food particles are filtered out at the same time. These may be trapped in mucus and moved to the mouth by the beating of cilia. [16] Respiration in the echinoderms (such as starfish and sea urchins) is carried out using a very primitive version of gills called papulae.
The water is circulated by the action of the gills. Usually water enters the mantle cavity through the inhalant siphon, moves over the gills, and leaves through the exhalant siphon. The water current is utilized for respiration, but also for filter feeding, excretion, and reproduction.
Gill arches supporting the gills in a pike. Branchial arches or gill arches are a series of paired bony/cartilaginous "loops" behind the throat (pharyngeal cavity) of fish, which support the fish gills. As chordates, all vertebrate embryos develop pharyngeal arches, though the eventual fate of these arches varies between taxa.
The gills are composed of comb-like filaments, the gill lamellae, which help increase their surface area for oxygen exchange. [10] When a fish breathes, it draws in a mouthful of water at regular intervals. Then it draws the sides of its throat together, forcing the water through the gill openings, so that it passes over the gills to the outside.