What are 3 characteristics of Polyplacophora?

The main characteristics of Polyplacophora include (1) elongate or oval, dorsoventrally flattened, bilaterally symmetrical, marine; (2) with dorsal shell of eight plates embedded in a tough mantle; (3) mantle-edge stiffened (called the girdle); (4) large, muscular, ventral foot (girdle and foot can act as suction cup); …

What are chitons adaptations?

Chitons are adapted to living on hard rock surfaces. They have a very muscular foot, and when disturbed, can clamp down so that they cannot be dislodged unless their shell is smashed. Chitons can live for one to twenty years, or more.

What is the importance of chiton?

Even though chitons are important for their role as primary consumers of marine plants, many chitons feed predominantly on animals, for example, grazing on encrusting colonial animals in the low intertidal or on sponges or foraminifera in the deep sea or associated with deep sunken wood or even deep-sea hydrothermal …

How can you identify a chiton?

Chitons are dorso-ventrally flattened and are bilaterally symmetrical. They have an elongated oval body. Dorsally, the mantle bears eight shell valves. These arched transverse plates interlock along the anterior-posterior margins in such a way that the animal is able to curl up into a ball when disturbed.

Why do chitons have 8 plates?

Some species have larger, direct-developing eggs that are brooded in the female’s mantle cavity, from which a juvenile chiton is formed. The shell gland develops with seven regions on the dorsum of the juvenile; the seventh band divides later to form an eighth. Thus, eight shell plates are formed.

Do all chitons have 8 plates?

All chitons bear a protective dorsal shell that is divided into eight articulating aragonite valves embedded in the tough muscular girdle that surrounds the chiton’s body.

How many eyes do chitons have?

1,000 eyes
And chitons have up to 1,000 eyes and can grow more throughout their lifetimes, replacing any that are damaged.

What are chitons made of?

Chiton is a type of sewn clothing worn by ancient Greeks from 750-30 BC. It was generally made from single rectangle of woolen or linen fabric. At the waist chiton was kept in place by a belt. There were two styles of chiton throughout the history, Doric or Dorian and Ionic.

Do chitons have a mantle?

Like among other molluscs, the chiton’s sturdy backside is referred to as mantle (pallium). Contrary to snails, for example, chitons, have no mantle cavity containing gills. Instead, there is a groove running almost all around the animal between mantle and foot containing numerous mollusc-type gills or ctenidia.

How do limpets adapt to their environment?

The cup-shaped shells of limpets is an adaptation that enables them to thrive on higher rocks and near the sea. Limpets living near the water have flatter and smaller shells, so that the forces of waves cannot beat against them and pull them away. Those thriving in higher rocks have higher and wider shells.

How do chitons breathe?

On the sides of the body, the foot and girdle are separated by a special groove. Inside the groove are gills that help the chiton to breathe underwater. Oxygen-carrying water enters the grooves near the head, flows through the gills, and exits at the rear of the body.

Do chitons have teeth?

Chitons have several dozen rows of teeth attached to a ribbon-like structure. Each tooth is composed of a mineralized cusp, or pointed area, and base supporting the mineralized cusp. Magnetite is deposited only in the cusp region.

How do chitons eat?

Most chitons feed by rasping algae and other encrusted food off of the rocks on which they crawl. One genus is predatory, trapping small invertebrates under the fringe of the mantle, and then eating the captured prey. In some chitons, the radula has teeth tipped with magnetite, which hardens them.

Why do chitons have so many eyes?

The West Indian fuzzy chiton has evolved a rather novel way to detect predators, with hundreds of tiny eyes across their shells. Each eye has a lens made of calcium carbonate crystals that focuses light onto light-sensitive cells. Together, the eyes create a visual system that allows the animals to detect predators.

Do chitons have eyes?

Chitons are protected by a shell consisting of eight plates. The plates are dotted with hundreds of small eyes called ocelli. Each one contains a layer of pigment, a retina and a lens.