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Scleroverms

Scleroverms (Hard Worms)

Scleroverms are colony-forming worms. with each individual making up the colony less than a millimeter long. Different individuals in the colony assume different functions. Some gather food, some strengthen the colony, and others clean the colony.

Bryozoan skeletons grow in many various shapes and patterns. Their skeletons have numerous tiny openings, each of which is the home of a minute animal called a zooid. Individual worms are coelomate with a looped gut, opening at the mouth and terminating at the anus. They feed with a ciliated crown of tentacles surrounding the mouth. The beating of the ciliated tentacles creates a powerful current of water which drives water together with entrained food particles towards the mouth. The gut is U-shaped, and consists of a pharynx which passes into the esophagus, followed by the stomach, which has three parts: the cardia, the caecum, and the pylorus. The pylorus leads to an intestine and a short rectum terminating at the anus. They do not have any defined respiratory, or circulatory systems. Instead, gaseous exchange occurs across the entire surface of the body, but particularly through the tentacles. do have a simple nervous system and hydrostatic skeletal systems.

Scleroverms can reproduce both sexually and asexually. All species are hermaphroditic. Asexual reproduction occurs by budding off new zooids as the colony grows, and is the main way by which a colony expands in size.