In hemichordates is digestion intracellular or extracellular and is the digestive system complete?

1. Solitary and colonial, mostly tubicolous, exclusively marine.

2. Body soft, fragile, vermiform and divisible into proboscis, collar and trunk.

3. Body wall with a single-layered epidermis.

4. Coelom enterocoelous, divisible into protocoel, mesocoel and metacoel.

5. Buccal diverticulum, earlier considered as notochord, present in the proboscis.

6. Digestive tract complete; in the form of straight or U-shaped tube.

7. Gill-slits, when present, are paired and one to numerous.

8. Circulatory system simple and well developed; closed type; usually with a contractile heart vesicle and two longitudinal vessels, one dorsal and one ventral, interconnected by lateral vessels and sinuses.

9. Excretion by a single glomerulus situated in the proboscis.

10. Nervous system primitive comprising mainly of an intra-epidermal nerve plexus.

11. Reproduction mostly sexual. Sexes separate or united.Gonads one to several pairs.

12. Fertilisation external. Development mostly indirect through a free swimming tornaria larva. Direct development is also found in some forms.

  • 1
What are you looking for?