Physiology and histology of the Cubomedusæ: including Dr. F.S. Conant's notes on the physiologyBerger, E. W. (Edward William)
Science
Physiology and histology of the Cubomedusæ: including Dr. F.S. Conant's notes on the physiology
Berger, E. W. (Edward William)
Cubomedusae
The Cubomedusæ, as the name implies, approximate cubes, with their
tentacles (four in Charybdea) arranged at the four corners of the lower
face of the cube. These tentacles are said to lie in the interradii.
Half way between any two points of attachment of the pedalia (the basal
portions of the tentacles) and a little above the margin of the bell
(cube), in a niche, hang the sensory clubs, one on each side, four in
all. Each sensory club hangs in a niche of the exumbrella and is attached
by a small peduncle whose axial canal is in connection with one of
the four stomach-pockets and in the club proper forms an ampulla-like
enlargement.
Each club is said to lie in a perradius, and, like the tentacles, belongs
to the subumbrella. This is shown by the course of the vascular lamellæ,
bands of cells that, stretching through the jelly from the endoderm to
the ectoderm all around the margin, form the line of division between
sub- and exumbrella.
Each club has six eyes. Two of these on the middle line of the club
facing inwards are called the proximal and distal complex eyes, to
distinguish them from the four simple eyes that are disposed laterally,
two on each side of the line of the two complex eyes. All of these eyes
look inwards into the bell cavity through a thin transparent membrane
of the subumbrella. Besides the eyes and the ampulla already mentioned,
a concretion fills the lowermost part of the club, and a group of large
cells, having a network-like structure and called network cells by
Conant, fill the uppermost part of the club between the proximal complex
eye and the attachment of the club to its peduncle (Plate II, Fig. 13).
What is evidently nerve tissue, fibers and ganglion cells, fills the rest
of the club, with two groups of large ganglion cells disposed laterally
from the network cells. A sensory (flagellate) epithelium covers the club.
Most Cubomedusæ, among them Charybdea, have a velarium (comparable to the
velum of the Hydromedusæ), a membrane of tissue that extends inwards at
right angles all around the margin. This velarium, like a velum, has a
central opening through which the water is expelled from the bell-cavity
when the animal pulsates. In the perradii and in the angle between the
velarium and the body wall, are the frenula, which give support to
the velarium much like brackets support a shelf, except that here the
brackets are above the shelf instead of below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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