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This section is broken down into the following groups:
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- Turgid Body
- Body walls without circular muscles
- A VERY high internal pressure. Internal pressure is due to two factors:
- Cuticle does not expand, pressure relief can NOT occur.
- Musculature is always in somewhat of a contracted state
- Lack of cilia, thus no ciliary movement is possible.
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Nematodes move by undulations or wave-like motions of the body. This produces a thrashing movement.
The body’s contractions are according to dorsal/ventral contractions of the body.
As one segment of the body contracts it “pulls” the remainder of the body forward.
Therefore the contracting/relaxing alternations provide a locomotion style for the nematode.
The muscles are able to “manipulate” each other to contract/relax accordingly by use of the
pressure changes through the fluid skeletal space of the pseudocoel.
As the muscles are contracted, to relax and extend the “stressed” muscles by means of
the stiff cuticle and high pressure which forces the organism to take form of it’s
longitudinal characteristic.
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Control of muscles is acquired by a simple nervous system
consisting of an anterior brain, and 4+ longitudinal nerve cords.
Below is a diagram of the nematode's nervous system. It displays the nerve cord location in relation
to the muscle cells and the muscle cell location to the body wall of the nematode. This diagram, if
analyzed and understood correctly, can give an idea of the track the nerve impulse, sensation of the
muscles and the effect it has on the nematode's locomotion ability.
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Basics