Invertebrate Animal Flashcards
Vertebrate
An animal that has a backbone.
Invertebrate
An animal that doesn’t have a backbone.
Consumer
An organism that eats other organisms or organic matter.
Ganglion
A mass of nerve cells.
Gut
The digestive tract.
Coelom
A body cavity that contains the internal organs.
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
A piece of a soft, light, porous substance originally consisting of the fibrous skeleton of an invertebrate but now usually made of synthetic material. They absorb liquid and are used for washing and cleaning.
Cnidarians
An aquatic invertebrate animal of the phylum Cnidaria, which comprises the coelenterates.
Flatworms
A worm of a phylum that includes the planarians together with the parasitic flukes and tapeworms. They are distinguished by having a simple flattened body that lacks blood vessels, and a digestive tract that, 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 that 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
Pump blood into a hemocoel with the blood diffusing back to the circulatory system between cells.
