Earthworm Disection

Earthworm Dissection

The purpose of dissecting the earthworm was to understand and get a first hand look at what their accusal parts look like. The goal was to get a good understanding on how they breath, move, excrete, eat and live. This lab helped me a lot because looking at a diagram I did not really understand and get the idea of what it accualy looks like but getting a first hand looked really helped me get the whole idea. I had a lot of fun dissecting the earthworm and looking at it under the microscope and i learned tons of things from this lab!

1) what is the name is the pumping organs of an earthworm?

The five aortic arches

This is a picture i took of the five aortic arches(hearts)

2) This is a picture I took of the digestive track, and these are the intestines.

 3) Which parts of the earthworm serve as its brain? How are these parts connected to the rest of the body?

The ganglion serves as its brain, it is connected to the nerve collar and the ventral nerve cord and it runs the length of its body. 

 4)Which of the parts of the worm's body that you saw are included in the excretory system?
Mouth(sucks in food), Pharynx, Esophagus, Crop (food is stored until rest of track is clear), Gizzard(food is ground up with stones), Intestines (Nutrients absorbed) and Anus(food is excreted).

 5)How can you find out whether an earthworm east soil?

I looked in the intestine and I found soil (poop) and this proves that it eats soil. 

This is a picture of the intestine and soil under the microscope. 

 6)Among the earthworms structural adoptions are its setae. How do you think the earthworms setae make it well adapted to its habitat?

The setae is well adapted to its habitat because it helps with burrowing and moving through the dirt, without them they would have a much harder time moving through the dirt.

7)How is the earthworms digestive system extracting relatively small amounts of food from large amounts of ingested soil?

The gizzard is a muscular organ used to churn the food and then it moves onto the intestine where absorption of the food occurs.

 8) Your dissection of the earthworm did not go beyond segment 32. What will you observe if you dissected the remainder of the worm to its posterior end ? I did go past segment 32 and I found the intestines and the anus.

9)Where you located the earthworms reproductive organs, use a reference to identify the role of each organ.
clitellums(produces the mucus to hold the worms together during reproduction)  in contact with segments 9-11 of their mating partner. Sperm is made in the seminal vesicals (large organs on either side of esophagus)and is received in the seminal receptacles.Eggs are stored in the oviduct. After they secrete a ring of mucus around the clitellum and it slides of and takes the sperm from the seminal receptacles and eggs frrom the oviducts, it forms into a cocoon for the new baby worms to have nutrients.