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
A word on the epithelium covering the network cells of Fig. 13. Conant
and Schewiakoff here describe fibers from the supporting lamellæ that
pass in bundles in among the network cells. These fibers are supposed to
be a part of the supporting lamella which reaches out to be a support
for the epithelial cells. (Schewiakoff also describes similar fibers for
other parts of the epithelium.) Now, as Conant himself shows in Fig.
13, these coarse fibers are not of the same consistency and staining
capacity as the supporting lamella. I found them to stain just like the
intracellular parts of the flagella or like the central continuations
of the axial fibers of the cells of the simple eyes. I could, also,
occasionally trace them to the surface of the epithelium, and beyond,
when they became continued as short blunt processes or flagella (Fig.
13). I, therefore, conclude that they are sensory fibers like those I
have described for the other epithelial cells. Yet, that they pass to
the supporting lamella, just as Conant shows in Fig. 13, would seem to
indicate that they are fibers from the supporting lamella or processes of
the epithelial cells. While this stands as an objection to their being
sensory fibers, yet I cannot explain away their being continued distally
as a flagellum, except I assume this continuation to be an artefact.
This does not seem probable. Perhaps they serve both purposes; namely,
that the cell body with its axial fiber is continued to the supporting
lamella, the cell proper ending there, while the axial fiber is continued
as a nerve fiber. I believe this to be the proper explanation.
The epithelium of the peduncle is quite like the epithelium of the
club just described. Sections through the tips of the epithelial cells
of the peduncle and also sections sagittal to the axis of these cells
give sections like Figs. 25 and 26. I, therefore, conclude that this
epithelium is a sensory flagellate epithelium like that of the clubs.
Nerve tissue and unstriped muscle fibers underly the epithelium of the
peduncles. Claus and Conant also describe a small ventral endodermal
tract of nerve tissue, which according to Conant is connected with the
endodermal nerve tissue found in the region of the radial ganglia.
To sum up, the epithelium of the club and the peduncle is a flagellate
sensory epithelium whose flagella are continued through the cells as
nerve fibers into the nerve tissue below. _A priori_, judging from the
mass of nerve tissue underlying the epithelium, we should expect the
epithelium to be one strictly sensory. What sense it serves is difficult
to surmise. In the physiological part of this paper I suggested that it
might be tactile, serving in connection with the lithocysts in giving the
animal sensations of space relations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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