A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working Entomologist — John Shaqi
A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working EntomologistPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working Entomologist
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
Sinclair (Heathcote) regards each double segment in the diplopods as
not two original segments fused together, nor a single segment
bearing two pairs of legs, but as “two complete segments perfect in
all particulars, but united by a large dorsal plate which was
originally two plates which have been fused together.” (Myriopods,
1895, p. 71.) That the segments were primitively separate is shown,
he adds, by the double nature of the circulatory system, the nerve
cord, and the first traces of segmentation in the mesoblast. Kenyon
believes that from the conditions in pauropods, Lithobius, etc.,
there are indications of alternate plates (not segments) having
disappeared, and of the remaining plates overgrowing the segments
behind them, so as to give rise to the anomalous double segments.[3]
[Illustration:
FIG. 11.—Sixth pair of legs of _Polyzonium germanicum_, ♀: _cs_,
ventral sacs; _cox_, coxa; _st_, sternal plate; _sp_,
spiracle.—After Haase.
]
Diplopods are also provided with eversible coxal sacs, in position like
those of Symphyla and Synaptera; Meinert, Latzel, and also Haase having
detected them in several species of Chordeumidæ, Lysiopetalidæ, and
Polyzonidæ (Fig. 11). In _Lysiopetalum anceps_ these blood-gills occur
in both sexes between the coxæ of the third to sixteenth pair of limbs.
In the Diplopods the blood-gills appear to be more or less permanently
everted, while in Scolopendrella they are usually retracted within the
body (Fig. 15, _cg_).
Diplopods also differ externally from insects in the genital armature, a
complicated apparatus of male claspers and hooks apparently arising from
the sternum of the sixth segment and being the modified seventh pair of
legs. In myriopods there are no pleural pieces or “pleurites,” so
characteristic of winged insects.
Perhaps the most fundamental difference between diplopods and insects is
the fact that the paired genital openings of the former are situated not
far behind the head between the second and third pair of legs. Both the
oviducts and male ejaculatory ducts are paired, with separate openings.
The genital glands lie beneath, while in chilopods they lie above the
intestine; this, as Korschelt and Heider state, being a more primitive
relation, since in Peripatus they also lie above the digestive canal.
The nervous system of diplopods is not only remarkable for the lack of
the tendency towards a fusion of the ganglia observable in insects, but
for the fact that the double segments are each provided with two
ganglia. The brain also is very small in proportion to the ventral cord,
the nervous system being in its general appearance somewhat as in
caterpillars.
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