PHYLUM ACANTHOCEPHALA

Thorny-Headed Worms

● Rare
● Inhabit the intestine of fishes, amphibians, reptiles (rare), birds, and mammals
(occasionally cause serious disease).
● First recognizable description (Redi, 1964): white worms with hooked, retractable
proboscides in eel intestines.

FORM AND FUNCTION

● Small: Octospiniferoides chandleri, Large: Oligacanthorynchus longissimus

General Body Structure

● Consist of:
❖ Anterior proboscis
- vary in shape from spherical to cylindrical, depending on the species.
- Hollow and fluid filled
- Proboscis retractor muscles (PRM): a pair of muscles where proboscis
is attached to.
- Proboscis receptacle (PR): a muscular sac where PRM extends the
length of the proboscis and neck and inserts it in its wall.
➔ PR morphology varies depending on family, but generally consists
of one/two layers of muscle fibers attached to the inner wall of the
proboscis.
➔ When PRM contracts, it forces proboscis to evaginate by hydraulic
pressure.
➔ Brain/cerebral ganglion - a nerve ganglion located within the
receptacle.
- Presoma: proboscis + receptacle
❖ Neck
- Smooth, unspined zone between the most posterior proboscis hooks and
an infolding of the body wall.
- Neck retractor muscles (NRM) - attach this infolding of the body wall to
the inner surface of the trunk in some species.
➔ When PRM and NRM contract, the entire anterior end is
withdrawn into the trunk.
- Some species have a sensory pit on each side of the neck, and two
similar pits found on the proboscis tip of many species.
❖ Trunk
- Also known as metasoma
- Contains reproductive system
 - Also functions in absorbing and distributing nutrients from the host’s
intestinal contents.
- Living worms: trunk is bilaterally flattened
Hypotonic solution (tap water): worms swell and become turgid.
➔ Important for identification because it places the intestinal organs
in constant relationship with each other, forces the introverted
proboscis to evaginate, allowing hooks to be counted and
measured.

● Body is covered by a tegument and has a thin, muscular wall/layers within which are
embedded the roots of recurved, sclerotized hooks.
❖ Sizes, shapes, and numbers of these hooks are important taxonomic characters.

Body Wall

● A complex syncytium containing nuclear elements and lacunar system (a series of

internal, interconnecting canals)
● Some species have gigantic nuclei but few in number, while others have widely
distributed nuclei fragments during larval development.
● Principle of Eutely
- Nuclear constancy
- When entire nuclei are present, their numbers is constant for each species
● Development of the wall was described by Butterworth.

● Tegument
- Has several regions differing in their construction:
➔ Surface coat / glycocalyx
- Filamentous material, formerly known as epicuticle
- Moniliformis moniliformis - an acanthocephalan of rats
- It is a glycocalyx composed of acid mucopolysaccharides and
neutral polysaccharides and/or/glycoproteins.
- The stabilized system of filaments in the surface coat constitutes
an extensive surface for molecular interactions and those involved
in transport functions and enzyme-substrate interactions.
➔ Striped zone
- A trilaminar outer membrane, punctuated by a large number of
crypts that open to the surface by pores.
- Crypts give the zone a striped appearance (Streifenzone),
increasing the worm’s surface area.
- A filamentous molecular sieve is seen in the necks of these crypts,
but particles less than 8.5 nm can gain access to crypts and
undergo pinocytosis by the crypt membrane.
- In deeper regions are the lipid droplets, mitochondria, Golgi
complexes, and lysosomes.
 ➔ Felt-fiber zone
- A region of numerous, closely packed, randomly arranged fibrils.
- Mitochondria, glycogen particles, vesicles, and occasionally lipid
droplets and lysosomes.
➔ Radial fiber zone
- Within the felt-fiber zone, make up about 80% of body wall
thickness.
- Contain large bundles of filaments that course radially through the
cytoplasm, large lipid droplets, and nuclei of the body wall.
- Glycogen particles, mitochondria, Golgi complexes, and
lysosomes.
- Rough RER is found in the perinuclear cytoplasm
- Nuclei have numerous nucleoli
- Lacunar canals course through the radial fiber zone.
➔ Basement membrane

- Inside the tegument is a layer of irregular connective tissue, followed by circular and
longitudinal muscle layers.
- It is syncytial, but the nuclei are in its basal region, not in cytons separated from distal
cytoplasm compared to trematodes and cestodes.

● Lacunar System and Muscles

- A network of fluid-filled channels in the body
- Present in two parts:
➔ In the proboscis and neck
➔ In the trunk
- Lemnisci
➔ channels in the presomal lacunar system that run into two structures,
extensions of the radial fiber zone, that grow from the base of the neck
into the pseudocoelom.
➔ Has a central canal continuous with the presomal lacunar system.
- Metasomal lacunar system consists of a complicated network of
interconnecting canals.
➔ Most species consist of two main longitudinal canals (LC), either dorsal
and ventral or lateral (connected by numerous irregular or regular
transverse canals)
➔ Location and arrangement of lacuni are used as taxonomic characteristics
- In some species, there is a pair of medial longitudinal channels (MLC), each
connected periodically by short radial canals (RC) to circular canals coursing
between the dorsal and ventral longitudinal channels.
- Medial longitudinal channels (MLC) lie on the pseudocoel side of the body-wall
muscles, and radial canals (RC) pierce the muscle layers to intercept the ring
canals.
 - Body wall-muscles are composed of a longitudinal layer surrounded by a circular
muscle layer.
➔ Hollow, with tubelike cores and numerous, anastomosing interconnctives.
➔ Muscle lamina are continuous with the lacunar system: circulation of
lacunar fluid may well bring nutrients to and remove wastes from
muscles.
- Although no heart/circulatory organs, contraction of circular muscles would force
fluid into the longitudinal components and vice versa.
- The Lacunar system functions as an effective fluid transport system and
possibly a hydroskeleton.
- Acanthocephalan muscles are electrically excitable, have low membrane
potentials, and are slow conductors.
➔ Characterized by rhythmic, spontaneous depolarizations.
➔ Although muscles are stimulated by acetylcholine, it is believed that
nerves initiate contraction via rete system (highly branched,
anastomosing network of thin-walled tubules lying on the medial surface
of longitudinal and circular muscle layers. They are considered modified
muscle cells.)

Reproductive System

● Dioecious and demonstrate some degree of sexual dimorphism in size, with females
being larger.
● Both sexes have one or two thin ligament sacs attached to the posterior end of the
proboscis receptacle and extend near the distal genital pore.
- Within the sacs are gonads and some accessory organs of the reproductive
systems.
- Some species have permanent ligament sacs, while in others the sacs break
down as they mature.

● Male Reproductive System

- Two testes occur, locations and size are constant for each species.
➔ Each testis has a vas efferens through which spermatozoa (slender,
headless threads) travel to a common vas deferens and/or small penis.
- Two accessory organs: cement glands and copulatory bursa
- Cement glands
➔ accessory organ (syncytial organ)
➔ Contain one or more giant nuclei or several nuclear fragments and in
many species are joined in places by slender bridges.
➔ Secrete a copulatory cement of tanned protein stored in a cement
reservoir until copulation occurs.
➔ At that time the cement plugs the vagina after sperm transfer and rapidly
hardens to form a copulatory cap, remaining attached to the female’s
 posterior end during development of embryos within her body but
eventually disintegrates.
- Copulatory bursa
➔ A bell-shaped specialization of the distal body wall invaginated into the
posterior end of the body cavity except during copulation.
➔ Saefftigen’s pouch is a muscular sac attached to the base of the bursa.
➔ When it contracts, fluid is forced into the lacunar system of the bursa, and
it is everted by hydrostatic pressure.
➔ Sensory papillae line the bursa; when it contacts the posterior end of a
female, it clasps the female by muscular contraction, and sperm transfer
is effected with a small penis.

● Female Reproductive System

- Ovary fragments into ovarian balls early in the life cycle while the worm is still a
juvenile in an intermediate host.
- Balls of oogonia float freely within the ligament sac, increasing slightly in size
before insemination occurs.
➔ Posterior end of the ligament sac is attached to a muscular uterine bell,
which is an organ that allows mature eggs to pass through into the uterus
and vagina and out of the genital pore, while returning immature eggs to
the ligament sac.

● After copulation:
➔ Spermatozoa migrate from the vagina, through the uterus and uterine bell, and
into the ligament sac. There they begin fertilizing oocytes of the ovarian balls.
➔ After the first few cleavages embryos detach from ovarian balls and float freely in
pseudocoelomic fluid, exposing underlying oocytes for fertilization (hence,
several stages of early embryogenesis may be found in a single female.
➔ From one copulation, many thousands/millions of embryonated eggs are
produced and released by each female and then pass from the host in its feces.

● Two possible routes as shelled embryos are pushed into the uterine bell by peristaltic
action:
➔ They are passed back into pseudocoelom through slits in the bell
➔ Or move on into the uterus

● Fully developed embryos: longer than immature ones, hence passed into the uterus,
not through the bell slits
● Immature eggs: retained for further maturation. No immature forms are passed into the
uterus.
Excretory System

● Clas Archiancanthocephala, Family Oligacanthorhynchidae

- Possess two protonephridial excretory organs
➔ Each comprises many anucleate flame bulbs with tufts of flagella (may or
may not be encapsulated)
➔ Males: these organs are attached to vas deferens and empty through it
➔ Females: attached to the uterine bell and empty through the uterus
● Excretion in most species affected by diffusion through the body wall.
● Show little ability to osmoregulate
➔ swelling in hypotonic, balanced saline or sucrose solutions
➔ Becoming flaccid in hypertonic solutions (take up sodium and potassium).
➔ Balanced saline, they lose sodium and accumulate potassium against a
concentration gradient.
➔ Osmotic pressure of their pseudocoelomic fluid is close to or somewhat above
that of the intestinal contents.

Nervous System

● Acanthocephalans have a simple nervous system.

● Cerebral ganglion consists of 54-88 cells in studied species, located at the proboscis
receptacle.
● Relatively few nerves issue from the ganglion
➔ Largest nerves: anterior proboscis nerve and lateral posterior nerves.
● Nerves supply two lateral sense organs and an apical sense organ, if present.
● Support cell
- A large multinucleate cell, located ventral and slightly anterior to the cerebral
ganglion.
- Processes from this cell lead to lateral and apical sensory organs, but these
processes are not nerves.
- Function is unknown, but thought to be secretory and help explain a host’s
inflammatory reaction to the worm’s proboscis.