Turbellaria

Turbellaria

The class Turbellaria is the most primitive group within the phylum Platyhelminthes, the flatworms. Turbellarians share some important characteristics with other Platyhelminthes. All flatworms are flattened dorsoventrally . They are bilaterally symmetrical , are unsegmented, and are acoelomates , which means they do not have a body cavity. Turbellarians are solid because all the space around their digestive cavity is filled with muscle and other tissue. Turbellarians do not have a respiratory or circulatory system, they exchange gases by diffusion through all their cells. They have a muscular mouth, called a pharynx, as well as a saclike digestive cavity. Turbellarians also have an osmoregulatory system called the protonephridium. This system is made up of tubules, a network of little tubes, and specialized cells called flame cells.

The turbellarian nervous system includes a primitive brainlike structure in the head region, called a ganglion. This ganglion is formed by the thickening of the anterior part of the ventral nerve cords. The head region also has specialized sensory organs, which are more complex in turbellarians than in other flatworms. These organs include eye spots, which are composed of photoreceptors that detect light and are tactile and chemical sensory organs that help turbellarians find food. Movement is assisted by receptors that help maintain balance as well as detect movement. The sensory organs of turbellarians are more complex than those of other flatworms because turbellarians are free-living; all other flatworms are parasitic. The free-living turbellarians are ancestors of the parasitic flatworms; parasitism evolved as a specialized form of feeding and reproducing from the scavenger lifestyle of turbellarians. Turbellarians eat both living and dead animal material. Some turbellarians secrete digestive enzymes onto their food, then ingest the already-digested food particles through their pharynx. Others digest food in their digestive cavity. All flatworms must expel undigested food out of their mouth; they do not have an anus.

Turbellarians move around using cilia on their epidermis or by undulating their body with their muscles. Most turbellarians live in water, either fresh or salt water. A few species live on land in damp habitats like leaf litter. Turbellarians reproduce by fission and regeneration, or sexually. Turbellarians that reproduce sexually are hermaphroditic—sperm from one animal will fertilize eggs from another, and the eggs then hatch into small turbellarians. When reproducing by fission and regeneration, the tail end of the individual turbellarian adheres to a substrate and the head region pulls away from the tail. This eventually splits the flatworm in two, and each piece regenerates the end that is missing. Turbellarians are the only flatworms that can reproduce by fission.

There are more than 4,500 species of turbellarians. Most are less than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) long, and many are microscopic in size. Planarians (Dugesia ) are largest turbellarians; they can grow up to 0.5 meter (20 inches) long.

see also Phylogenetic Relationships of Major Groups.

Laura A. Higgins

Bibliography

Anderson, D. T., ed. Invertebrate Zoology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Barnes, Robert D. Invertebrate Zoology, 5th ed. New York: Saunders College Publishing, 1987.

Campbell, Neil A., Jane B. Reece, and Lawrence G. Mitchell. Biology, 5th ed. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999.

Purves, William K., Gordon H. Orians, H. Craig Heller, and David Sadava. Life: The Science of Biology, 5th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc. Publishers, 1998.