U0ltrastructural description of the musculature, the intraepidermal nervous system, and their interrelation in Pseudochordodes bedriagae (Nematomorpha)

Abstract.

The ultrastructure of the body wall muscles and the intraepidermal nervous system of the Gordiida Pseudochordodes bedriagae are described. The body wall muscles are of the circomyarian type, since the sarcomeres constitute a system of continuous peripheral helices. The organisation of the sarcomeres follows a pattern that resembles that of the striated muscles. The muscle fibres are separated into areas by invaginations formed exclusively by the plasma membrane (T component), while the sarcoplasmic reticulum lies at the sides of the Z granules forming subsarcolemmal cisternae, and in the zone near the nucleus, like flattened vesicles, contributing with the T component to the formation of dyads and triads. The muscle fibres present two types of adaptations for their innervation: (1) cytoplasmic projections towards the epidermis, and (2) invaginations of the plasmalemma. The motor peripheral nervous system is conformed by the nerve fibres that run within the epidermis and their projections towards the basal membrane in order to contact the adaptations of the muscle fibres in a basi-epidermal synapsis. The presence of an intraepithelial peripheral nervous system in Gordiida confirms a structural pattern common to other taxa of Nemathelminthes.