animal kingdom Flashcards
Vertebrates
an animal of a large group distinguished by the possession of a backbone or spinal column, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.
Invertebrates
an animal lacking a backbone, such as an arthropod, mollusk, annelid, coelenterate, etc. The invertebrates constitute an artificial division of the animal kingdom, comprising 95 percent of animal species and about 30 different phyla.
Consumer
a person or thing that eats or uses something.
. Ganglion
a structure containing a number of nerve cell bodies, typically linked by synapses, and often forming a swelling on a nerve fiber.
Gut
the stomach or belly.
Coelom
the body cavity in metazoans, located between the intestinal canal and the body wall.
Bilateral Symmetry
the property of being divisible into symmetrical halves on either side of a unique plane.
Radial Symmetry
symmetry around a central axis, as in a starfish or a tulip flower.
Asymmetry
lack of equality or equivalence between parts or aspects of something; lack of symmetry.
Sponges
primitive sedentary aquatic invertebrate with a soft porous body that is typically supported by a framework of fibers or calcareous or glassy spicules. Sponges draw in a current of water to extract nutrients and oxygen.
Cnidarians
an aquatic invertebrate animal of the phylum Cnidaria, which comprises the coelenterates.
Flatworms
a worm of a phylum which includes the planarians together with the parasitic flukes and tapeworms. They are distinguished by having a simple flattened body which lacks blood vessels, and a digestive tract which, if present, has a single opening.
Roundworms
a nematode, especially a parasitic one found in the intestines of mammals.
Mollusks
an invertebrate of a large phylum which includes snails, slugs, mussels, and octopuses. They have a soft unsegmented body and live in aquatic or damp habitats, and most kinds have an external calcareous shell.
Open circulatory system
Open circulatory systems (evolved in crustaceans, insects, mollusks and other invertebrates) pump blood into a hemocoel with the blood diffusing back to the circulatory system between cells. Blood is pumped by a heart into the body cavities, where tissues are surrounded by the blood.