ISSN:
0362-2525
Keywords:
Life and Medical Sciences
;
Cell & Developmental Biology
Source:
Wiley InterScience Backfile Collection 1832-2000
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
Notes:
Part of the nutriment of metamorphosing glochidia is supplied by the cellular host tissue, bitten by the larvae during attachment. Some of this is taken up piecemeal by the mantle cells and digested intracellularly. The coarse granules that first pack the mantle cells are apparently the precursors of a digestive secretion, some of which escapes into the mantle cavity. Here it also causes the prompt dissolution of additional utilizable host tissue.Another source of nutriment is furnished by the provisional larval adductor muscle which undergoes degenerative changes in situ, then fragments, and finally is carried away bit by bit by amoeboid cells. These turn over their muscle content to the larval mantle, where the particles are further reduced beyond recognition. The mantle remnant itself is finally sacrificed and doubtless becomes an additional source of nutriment.The gut serves as an organ of nutrition throughout the last two-thirds of the parasitic period. It appears to admit and digest pieces of the adductor muscle and certain unidentified particulate matter. In addition, the gut, like the definitive mantle and other organs, doubtless absorbs tissue transudate from the host.Special vascularization of the host tissue to facilitate the passage of nutriment from host to parasite does not occur, yet there is no reason to doubt that an appreciable part of the larval nutrition results from transuding tissue juices.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jmor.1050530108
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