BioStor
Sign in using Mendeley
Miscellaneous. 311 than the rest, as if some one had trodden on it, the Volute was found ; and in this way many were obtained in a living and beautiful state. On Loxosoma Kefersteinii, a soft Bryozoan of the Bay of Naples. By E. Claparede. In 1862 M. Claparede discovered on the coast of Normandy an epizoon of the worms of the genus Notomastus, which was shortly afterwards described by Professor Keferstein under the name of Loxosoma singulare. It is a Bryozoon, allied to PedicelUna (Sars), in which the anal extremity of the intestine pierces the wall of the pharynx, and opens outwards in the middle of the mouth. It is entirely soft, being destitute of the hard integuments so general among the Bryozoa. The bay of Naples contains a great abundance of a second species of Loxosoma, measuring about half a millimetre in length (exclusive of the peduncle) ; it lives, attached by its peduncle, upon various animals, chiefly Bryozoa of the genus Acamarchis. M. Claparede names it L. Kefersteinii. The body is of an elongate-ovoid form, obliquely truncated in front by the buccal funnel, into which the ciHated tentacles are usually re-tracted under the abnormal conditions induced by observation. The funnel contracts so as to form a sort of diaphragm above the mouth and anus ; but this always presents an aperture by which the water may penetrate freely into the cavity of the funnel, where it is con-stantly renewed by the movement of the cilia covering the inner sur-face of the wall of this cavity and the inner surface of the tentacles. The tentacles appear to be fourteen in number ; L. singulare has only ten. The digestive apparatus is arranged as in the species from the Channel ; the lower extremity of the buccal funnel passes gra-dually into the oesophagus, which extends to the posterior extremity of the body, where it bends round and opens into a large greenish-yellow stomach. From this springs a short, cylindrical intestine, which pierces the wall of the pharynx to open externally in the middle of the mouth. The anal portion does not rise, as in L. sin-gulare, like a kind of chimney, to the highest region of the buccal funnel. The author thinks that this interpretation of the parts of the ali-mentary tube is not quite free from doubt, and that it is possible the part called by M. Keferstein and himself the mouth may be the anus, and vice versa. The very contractile peduncle is of variable length, but always much longer than in L. singulare. It terminates in a sort of sucking-disk ; and six or seven bands of muscles run from one end of it to the other ; these are separated from each other by the same num-ber of rows of nuclei, 0-006 millim. in diameter. The only individuals showing sexual organs were females, and in these the ovaries exactly resemble those of L. singulare. Most of the specimens were engaged in gemmiparous reproduction, the buds

Identifiers

Export

On Loxosoma Kefersteinii, a soft Bryozoan of the bay of Naples

E Claparède
Annals And Magazine of Natural History (4) 1: 311-312 (1868)

Reference added about 1 year ago

Tweet

Viewer

Page 311
Page 312
Title
áàåäçéèÉöøüæœß
Authors
One author per line, "First name Last name" or "Last name, First name"
Journal
ISSN
OCLC
Series
Volume
Issue
Starting page
Ending page
Date
Year
URL
DOI
 Update 
blog comments powered by Disqus
Page loaded in 0.24437 seconds