Also, known as Beard Worms Completely unknown until the twentieth century

Tube-dwelling worms found throughout

worlds oceans (at depths between 100

and 4000 m)

All 120 described species are marine

 Bilaterally

symmetrical and vermiform. Body has more than two cell layers, tissues and organs. Body cavity is a true coelom. Body possesses no gut, mouth or anus. Body possesses 3 separate sections, a prosoma, a trunk and a opisthosoma.

Has a simple nervous system with an anterior nerve ring and a ventral nerve chord. Has a true closed circulatory system. Has simple respiratory organs. Reproduction normally sexual and gonochoristic. Feed on detritus, or dissolved nutrients, or through symbiosis with bacteria. All live in marine environments.

 No

mouth or digestive tract Organ known as Trophosome filled with chemoautotrophic mutualistic bacteria Unsegmented except for rear portion of animal, (or opisthosoma). Conspicuous red color at ends of plume due to hemoglobin

Divided into four sections: The cephalic lobe The glandular region The trunk And the opisthosoma

 Consists

of a plume of one to many thousands of ciliated tentacles Used for gas exchange, and some nutrient uptake Also thought to be used to obtain Hydrogen Sulfide

 Contains

cells that secrete chitinous tube Some species contain girdle, (or vestimentum) in this region, which aids in keeping the worm steady in its tube

Normally stand upright and are buried, to about 50% of their length in the substrate

 The

longest part of the pogonophoran body bears two rows of papillae (little bumps or warts) along its length 2 regions of ciliation, and 2 girdles of setae (help the animal hold its place within its tube)

5 to 30 segments This holdfast is thicker than the trunk section and is buried in the substrate beyond the end of the animals tube.

Since pogonophora lack a digestive tract many speculations have been made as to how they obtain nutrients:

Via tentacles

many believe that some of the smaller

Via chemoautotrophic bacteria

species can obtain dissolved organic matter through their tentacles transport it using hemoglobin to the trophosome where it is converted to carbohydrates by the many bacteria that live there

The tentacles absorb hydrogen sulfide and

 According

to many recent studies involving the sequencing of the elongation factor-1 alpha and developmental studies comparing larvae and basic body plans has grouped the Phylum Pogonophora within the Phylum Annelida.
Now known more accurately as Siboglinidae (a family of polychaete annelids)

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