Kinorhyncha
phylum of animals
Kinorhyncha (Ancient Greek: κινέω, romanized: kīnéō, lit. 'I move', ῥύγχος rhúnkhos "snout") is a phylum of small marine invertebrates that are widespread in mud or sand at all depths as part of the meiobenthos. They are commonly called mud dragons. Modern species are 1 mm (0.039 in) or less, but Cambrian forms could reach 4 cm (1.6 in).
Anatomy
Kinorhynchs are limbless animals, with a body consisting of a head, neck, and a trunk of eleven segments. They are the only members of Ecdysozoa, except from the panarthropoda, with a segmented body; a feature that probably evolved independently from them. Juveniles have eight or nine segments, depending on genus, with the last two or three being added later during growth. A Cambrian species, Eokinorhynchus rarus, had about twice as many segments as present forms. Like other ecdysozoans they do not have external cilia, but instead have a number of spines along the body, plus up to seven circles of spines around the head. These spines are used for locomotion, withdrawing the head and pushing forward, then gripping the substrate with the spines while drawing up the body.
The body wall consists of a thin syncitial layer, which secretes a tough cuticle; this is molted several times while growing to adulthood.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kinorhyncha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.