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Free-living flatworms are mostly predators, and live in water or in shaded, humid terrestrial environments, such as leaf litter. Cestodes (tapeworms) and trematodes (flukes) have complex life-cycles, with mature stages that live as parasites in the digestive systems of fish or land vertebrates, and intermediate stages that infest secondary hosts.
The Turbellaria are one of the traditional sub-divisions of the phylum Platyhelminthes (flatworms), and include all the sub-groups that are not exclusively parasitic.There are about 4,500 species, which range from 1 mm (0.039 in) to large freshwater forms more than 500 mm (20 in) long [3] or terrestrial species like Bipalium kewense which can reach 600 mm (24 in) in length.
It is clear that they evolved from free-living flatworms (turbellarians), but their sister-group was for a long time a matter of debate. The first attempts to reconstruct the phylogeny of flatworms, based on morphological evidence, considered Rhabdocoela to be the sister-group of Neodermata, but this was based on weak morphological similarities ...
Digenea (Gr. Dis – double, Genos – race) is a class of trematodes in the Platyhelminthes phylum, consisting of parasitic flatworms (known as flukes) with a syncytial tegument and, usually, two suckers, one ventral and one oral.
Rhabditophora (from rhabdito-, rhabdite + Greek-φορος [-phoros], bearer, i.e., "rhabdite bearers") is a subphylum (previously a class) of flatworms.It includes all parasitic flatworms (clade Neodermata) and most free-living species that were previously grouped in the now obsolete class Turbellaria.
The parasitic flatworms, which includes tapeworms, flukes and monogeneans, evolved from a single major lineage of free-living flatworm ancestors. The switch from a free-living to a parasitic lifestyle in the common ancestor of the parasitic flatworms involved a fundamental change in their tegument, which is found in all contemporary groups. [7]
Trepaxonemata (from trepa-, spiral + axoneme) is a subclass of the Platyhelminthes or flatworms. [1] It includes all parasitic flatworms (clade Neodermata) and several free-living species that were previously grouped in the now obsolete class Turbellaria.
Most species are free-living, feeding on microorganisms, but many are parasitic. Parasitic worms (helminths) are the cause of soil-transmitted helminthiases. They are classified along with arthropods, tardigrades and other moulting animals in the clade Ecdysozoa. Unlike the flatworms, nematodes have a tubular digestive system, with openings at ...