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Earthworms
Earthworms live underground, and are used by often humans for fishing bait, gardening, and waste decomposition.
952 Questions
What is the function of esophagus in an earthworm?
The esophagus of an earthworm is part of the earthworm's digestive tract, between the pharynx and the crop, and it basically just moves the earthworm's food from the pharynx to the crop. It also helps to keep the food from backing up (making the worm barf/throw up).
What is the hirudinea and oligochaeta?
Hirudinea are leeches. many are predators that feed on other invertebrates, but some are parasites that suck blood. body usually flat, chaetae(each segment has 4 pairs of chaetae, bristles that provides traction for burrowing) absent, sucker at anterior and posterior ends, parasites, scavengers.
Oligochaeta: freshwater, marine, and terrestrial segmented worms such as earthworms, reduced head, no parapodia, chaetae present. ^_^
Do earthworms fertilize their own eggs?
As the maturity of the female gential organs and the male gential organs differ with time it cannot self fertilize, for example when its first male it can reproduce with other worms but once its clitellum enlarges and produces mucous and become a female its male genitilia will not undergo spermatogenesis.
How do earthworms improve garden health?
The opening up of passageways through the soil and the leaving of nutrient rich organic matter are two ways in which earthworms improve garden health. The passages that they open in their movements through soil encourage the presence of air and water pore spaces. Pore spaces encourage appropriate levels of air and moisture below ground. They thereby discourage compaction and erosion.
The matter that earthworms leave in soil comes in the form of droppings. These droppings are high in such important nutrients as nitrogen. Plants only can take nitrogen in soluble form. Nitrogen that otherwise is unavailable to plants becomes available once it passes through and out of earthworm.
Yes, it does. In broad daylight, birds are flying in the sky, looking for something to eat. The worm, because of this, hides in holes.( As you know that birds eat worms)
Also, worms can dry out quick in the sun and lose the moisture they have on their bodies that help them move around. So they also have to stay in holes underground where the dirt is moist, so they can move through the ground without a problem. It's our natural instinct to run from wildfire, and it is theirs to hide from the sun. We all have good reasons to be afraid or hide from something.
Hope this helped!
Caleigh ( Kay-lee)
What is different about the ventral side of an earthworm?
The dorsal side of an earthworm is darker than the ventral side because of the dorsal blood vessal that runs along the top of the digestive track and just under the skin. There is a ventral blood vessal, but it doesn't lie against the skin, but instead in between the ventral nerve cord and the digestive track.
Are earthworms and leeches members of the same phylum?
Earthworms are big segmented worms that belong to the Phylum Annelida, Class Clitellata, and sub class Oligochaeta. Leeches are also worms belonging to the same Phylum and class, but sub class Hirudinae and are of three types, freshwater, terrestrial and marine.
Earthworms live all over the world, there is no specific place they live in.
Cats like to play with wiggly things. Once the cat discovers that there are fun things beneath the surface, he will continue to look for them.
Earthworms do not have jaws. They suck their nutrition through their mouth by the help on the pharynx and this food is churned in the gizzard after passing trough the esophagus and or being stored in the crop.
What is the habit of earthworm?
They do not have any eyes due to not needing to see underground since it is so dark. They are compact and streamline to easily move around as well as the face they can shape shift like white blood cells so that they can easily squeeze through holes. They also adapt so that they are not 'truly' dead when split in half as they can both move, they also eat dirt which can contain nutrients and therefore do not need to eat anything complicated and far and few to find.
Why is snakes better than earthworm?
Snakes are awesome as they can be interacted with while earhworms do nothing in particular, however snakes may potentially kill you.
What do Gippsland's Giant Earthworms eat?
They don't eat dirt, like many people believe. All earthworms eat decaying plant and animal matter, and they usually swallow some soil with it. They soil, however, passes right through and exits as castings. The decaying matter is what earthworms actually need for nutrients and energy.
How many body segments does an earthworm have?
Invertebrates
Earthworms are invertebrates. That is, they do not have a backbone. Insects, sea stars, spiders, jellyfish, and millipedes are other examples of invertebrate animals.
Segments
Study the illustration of an earthworm shown below. You will notice that earthworms have long, cylindrical body that is divided into similar segments. The grooves that extend around the body of the worm show the arrangement of the segments.
Some species of earthworms have a body composed of over 100 segments. How many segments does your earthworm have?
Symmetry
Earthworms have bilateral symmetry. This means that if you cut the earthworm down the centerline, the left side of the body would be identical to the right side.
Body Colours
One of the key features of an earthworm is the colour of its body. Some species of earthworms have a dark-red or red-violet body while other species are muddy-green. However, there are species that do not have these colours. For the purposes ofWorm Watch, these animals are said to have "other body colours."
Prostomium
Some species of earthworms have a tongue-like lobe above the mouth called prostomium. The prostomium is actually a sensory device. Earthworms do not have a nose, eyes, ears, or hands to gather sensory information about their environment. Instead, they depend on their prostomium and sensory receptors in their skin to "feel" their way through the soil.
Peristomium
The first body segment is called theperistomium. The peristomium contains the mouth.
Clitellum
Adult (sexually mature) earthworms have a distinct swelling called a clitellum. It is located about one-third of the way down the earthworm. The clitellum is often white or orange in colour. It produces most of the material secreted to form earthworm cocoons. The clitellum forms a band that can be flared, non-flared, saddle-shaped, or annular. It is generally found between segments 26 and 33.
The clitellum is only found on adult worms. Young or juvenile worms do not have a clitellum. The clitellum of each species of earthworm has a distinct colour, size, and shape. Another key structure found on the clitellum is thetubercula pubertatis.
The diagram shows the shape and structure of the clitellum. They may have any combination of shapes.
Tubercula Pubertatis (TP)
The tubercula pubertatis (TP) is another structure used to identify earthworms. The TP are glandular swellings located on both sides of the clitellum. They can assume a variety of shapes such as long and narrow, triangular, or sucker-like.
The shape and location of the tubercula pubertatis (TP) on the clitellum are key features used to identify mature earthworms.]
Genital Tumescences (GT)
The genital tumescences (GT) are areas of modified epidermis (skin) that do not have distinct boundaries. These are openings through which follicles of genital setae open.
The pattern and location of the GT are important clues to identifying different species of earthworms.]
Anterior
Locate the clitellum of a mature earthworm. The shorter region to one side of the clitellum is the anterior or head-end of the animal. This end of the worm is usually more pointed than the posterior end of the animal.
The prostomium is the first segment at the anterior end of the animal.
Posterior
Locate the clitellum of a mature earthworm. The longer region is the posterior or tail end of the earthworm.
Dorsal
The top-side of an animal is called the dorsal surface. For example, the fin you see in all shark movies shows the dorsal fin of a shark just before it attacks. The dorsal surface of some species of earthworms is darker than its ventral surface.
Ventral
The bottom-side of an animal is called the ventralsurface. In many animals, the ventral surface is a lighter colour or shade than the dorsal surface.
Periproct
The periproct is the last segment of an earthworm.
Setae
Each segment, except the first and last, have tiny bristle-like structures called setae. These structures help the earthworm to move and act to sense the environment.
The number and arrangement of setae are important clues to the identification of earthworms.]
Epidermis
The epidermis is the name for the skin of an earthworm. It is the outer layer of worm and it secretes a mucous.
How does an earthworm get rid of liquid waste?
The annelids ( also called Ringed Worm ), collectively called Annelida (from French annelés "ringed ones", ultimately from Latin anellus "little ring"[1]), are a large phylum of segmented worms, with over 17,000 modern species including ragworms, earthworms and leeches. They are found in marine environments from tidal zones to hydrothermal vents, in freshwater, and in moist terrestrial environments. Although most textbooks still use the traditional division into polychaetes (almost all marine), oligochaetes (which include earthworms) and leech-like species, research since 1997 has radically changed this scheme, viewing leeches as a sub-group of oligochaetes and oligochaetes as a sub-group of polychaetes. In addition, the Pogonophora, Echiura and Sipuncula, previously regarded as separate phyla, are now regarded as sub-groups of polychaetes. Annelids are considered members of the Lophotrochozoa, a "super-phylum" of protostomes that also includes molluscs, brachiopods, flatworms and nemerteans.
The basic annelid form consists of multiple segments, each of which has the same sets of organs and, in most polychaetes, a pair of parapodia that many species use for locomotion. Septa separate the segments of many species, but are poorly-defined or absent in some, and Echiura and Sipuncula show no obvious signs of segmentation. In species with well-developed septa, the blood circulates entirely within blood vessels, and the vessels in segments near the front ends of these species are often built up with muscles to act as hearts. The septa of these species also enable them to change the shapes of individual segments, which facilitates movement by peristalsis ("ripples" that pass along the body) or by undulations that improve the effectiveness of the parapodia. In species with incomplete septa or none, the blood circulates through the main body cavity without any kind of pump, and there is a wide range of locomotory techniques - some burrowing species turn their pharynges inside out to drag themselves through the sediment.
Although many species can reproduce asexually and use similar mechanisms to regenerate after severe injuries, sexual reproduction is the normal method in species whose reproduction has been studied. The minority of living polychaetes whose reproduction and lifecycles are known produce trochophore larvae, which live as plankton and then sink and metamorphose into miniature adults. Oligochaetes are full hermaphrodites and produce a ring-like cocoon round their bodies, in which the eggs and hatchlings are nourished until they are ready to emerge.
Earthworms support terrestrial food chains both as prey and by aerating and enriching soil. The burrowing of marine polychaetes, which may constitute up to a third of all species in near-shore environments, encourages the development of ecosystems by enabling water and oxygen to penetrate the sea floor. In addition to improving soil fertility, annelids serve humans as food and as bait. Scientists observe annelids to monitor the quality of marine and fresh water. Although blood-letting is no longer in favor with doctors, some leech species are regarded as endangered species because they have been over-harvested for this purpose in the last few centuries. Ragworms' jaws are now being studied by engineers as they offer an exceptional combination of lightness and strength.
Since annelids are soft-bodied, their fossils are rare - mostly jaws and the mineralized tubes that some of the species secreted. Although some late Ediacaran fossils may represent annelids, the oldest known fossil that is identified with confidence comes from about 518 million years ago in the early Cambrian period. Fossils of most modern mobile polychaete groups appeared by the end of the Carboniferous, about 299 million years ago. Scientists disagree about whether some body fossils from the mid Ordovician, about 472 to 461 million years ago, are the remains of oligochaetes, and the earliest certain fossils of the group appear in the Tertiary period, which began 65 million years ago.
How do earth worms help to make the soil fertile?
They aerate the soil by breaking and and loosening it, allowing air to mix in, and they enrich it with their droppings. It will surprise some to know that it was Charles Darwin who did a lot of work to show that earthworms are quite beneficial, and not the pests they were thought to be during his day.
What does a setae on a earthworm do?
Setae are bristles or hair-like structures that help attach the earthworm to the ground and create friction so if an earthworm is going down a hill, it would slide down but actually continue to move through hydrostatic pressure.
Does an earthworm move faster on soil than on hard surfaces?
Last time I check they moved faster on smooth ground
How do gases move in and out of an earthworm?
Earth worms have and mouth and an anus. They can take in food or nutrients and defecate it out at the same time. Just like humans (but is not recommend).
Worms also have no eyes, ears or nose so they cannot see, hear or smell. Worms do however, have light-detecting cells on their bodies that can detect harmful light conditions. The ultra-violet rays of the sun are harmful to worms - they can even kill them, that is why worms spend most of their time underneath the surface of the ground.
What do a earthworm eye look like?
It looks a lot like an old Volkswagen Beetle radiator.
(If you're too young to get the joke: the engines in old Beetles were air-cooled. They didn't have radiators. Similarly, earthworms do not have eyes.)
They are important because thay help our gardens and soil.
Earthworms are the 'tillers' of the soil. Their continual burrowing aerates the soil providing oxygen needed by numerous soil fauna
What are earthworm bristles called?
The setae are small spines which are projected from the body wall by muscles to act as anchors in the surface that the worm is moving along. The muscle can also retract the setae
The circular muscles contract and expand in co-ordination with the longitudinal muscle in series such as that if the posterior muscle are expanded and the anterior circular muscles are contracted the worm pushes and stretches its front end forward. The anterior muscles then expand to anchor its front end by use of the setae and the rear end is pulled forward. All this happens in a smooth and rhythmic motion.
