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Free-living worm species do not live on land but instead live in marine or freshwater environments or underground by burrowing. In biology, "worm" refers to an obsolete taxon , Vermes , used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non- arthropod invertebrate animals , now seen to be paraphyletic .
This trend is concerning many scientists, as marine worms act as an important food source for many fish and wading birds. Marine worms are often keystone species in an ecosystem, and the introduction of plastic in the oceans not only diminishes the growth rates of the marine worms, but also affects the food chain of that ecosystem. [10]
Arthropoda is the largest animal phylum with the estimates of the number of arthropod species varying from 1,170,000 to 5~10 million and accounting for over 80 percent of all known living animal species. [35] [36] One arthropod sub-group, the insects, includes more described species than any other taxonomic class. [37]
The Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois) is a predatory species that can achieve a length of 3 m (10 ft)), with an average diameter of 25 mm (1 in). Dimorphilus gyrociliatus has the smallest known genome of any annelid. The species shows extreme sexual dimorphism. Females measure ~1 mm long and have simplified bodies containing six segments, a ...
Species in the phylum inhabit a broad range of environments. Most species are free-living, feeding on microorganisms, but many are parasitic. Parasitic worms (helminths) are the cause of soil-transmitted helminthiases. They are classified along with arthropods, tardigrades and other moulting animals in the clade Ecdysozoa.
Aquatic macroinvertebrates are insects in their nymph and larval stages, snails, worms, crayfish, and clams that spend at least part of their lives in water. These insects play a large role in freshwater ecosystems by recycling nutrients as well as providing food to higher trophic levels.
Marine horsehair worms spend their entire lives in water, but freshwater species are only aquatic as adults. Behavior manipulation of host animals is known only in freshwater species.
These worms can reach a length of 3 m (9 ft 10 in), [3] and their tubular bodies have a diameter of 4 cm (1.6 in). Its common name "giant tube worm" is, however, also applied to the largest living species of shipworm, Kuphus polythalamius, which despite the name "worm", is a bivalve mollusc rather than an annelid.