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It is an opening in the right side of the mantle of a stylommatophoran snail or slug. Air enters through the pneumostome into the animal's single lung, the air-filled mantle cavity. [1] Inside the mantle cavity the animal has a highly vascularized area of tissue that functions as a lung.
In some nudibranchs, the mantle cavity and the original gill have disappeared altogether. Instead, the upper surface of the body has numerous club-shaped or branched projections called cerata that function as secondary gills. Secondary gills are also present in the unrelated genus Patella, in which they are found as folds within the mantle cavity.
The mantle cavity is a central feature of molluscan biology. This cavity is formed by the mantle skirt, a double fold of mantle which encloses a water space. This space contains the mollusk's gills, anus, osphradium, nephridiopores, and gonopores. The mantle cavity functions as a respiratory chamber in most mollusks. In bivalves it is usually ...
The mantle cavity is on the right side of the body, and lacks gills, instead being converted into a vascularised lung. Most species have a shell, but no operculum, although the group does also include several shell-less slugs. Pulmonates are hermaphroditic, and some groups possess love darts. [3]
Although chitons lack osphradia, statocysts, and other sensory organs common to other molluscs, they do have numerous tactile nerve endings, especially on the girdle and within the mantle cavity. The order Lepidopleurida also have a pigmented sensory organ called the Schwabe organ. [ 26 ]
Water enters the mantle cavity through the apical aperture, and is wafted along the body surface by cilia. There are no gills; the entire surface of the mantle cavity absorbs oxygen from the water. Unlike most other molluscs, there is no continuous flow of water with a separate exhalant stream.
Fig. 15 The arrangement of the air sacs and lungs in birds Fig. 16 The anatomy of bird's respiratory system, showing the relationships of the trachea, primary and intra-pulmonary bronchi, the dorso- and ventro-bronchi, with the parabronchi running between the two. The posterior and anterior air sacs are also indicated, but not to scale.
A ctenidium is a respiratory organ or gill which is found in many molluscs. This structure exists in bivalves , cephalopods , polyplacophorans (chitons), and in aquatic gastropods such as freshwater snails and marine snails . [ 1 ]