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An example of a marine worm, the Parborlasia corrugatus lives at depths of up to 4,000 metres.. Any worm that lives in a marine environment is considered a water worm. Marine worms are found in several different phyla, including the Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida (segmented worms), Chaetognatha, Hemichordata, and Phoronida.
Helminths of importance in the sanitation field are the human parasites, and are classified as Nemathelminthes (nematodes) and Platyhelminthes, depending on whether they possess a round or flattened body, respectively. [8] Ringworm (dermatophytosis) is actually caused by various fungi, and not by a parasitic worm. [11] [12]
Platyhelminthes (flatworms) form another worm phylum which includes a class Cestoda of parasitic tapeworms. The marine tapeworm Polygonoporus giganticus, found in the gut of sperm whales, can grow to over 30 m (100 ft). [44] [45] Nematodes (roundworms) constitute a further worm phylum with tubular digestive systems and an opening at both ends.
Free-living flatworms are mostly predators, and live in water or in shaded, humid terrestrial environments, such as leaf litter. Cestodes (tapeworms) and trematodes (flukes) have complex life-cycles, with mature stages that live as parasites in the digestive systems of fish or land vertebrates, and intermediate stages that infest secondary hosts.
Unlike the flatworms, nematodes have a tubular digestive system, with openings at both ends. Like tardigrades, they have a reduced number of Hox genes , but their sister phylum Nematomorpha has kept the ancestral protostome Hox genotype, which shows that the reduction has occurred within the nematode phylum.
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 [3] or terrestrial species like Bipalium kewense which can reach 600 mm (24 in) in length.
Many microfauna, such as nematodes, inhabit soil habitats. Plant parasitic nematodes inhabit the roots of various plants, while free-living nematodes live in soil water films. [3] Microfauna also inhabit freshwater ecosystems. For example, freshwater microfauna in Australia include rotifers, ostracods, copepods, and cladocerans. [4]
The Spiralia are a morphologically diverse clade of protostome animals, including within their number the molluscs, annelids, platyhelminths and other taxa. [4] The term Spiralia is applied to those phyla that exhibit canonical spiral cleavage, a pattern of early development found in most members of the Lophotrochozoa.