Phoronida
/fəˈrɒnɪdə
/plural noun Zoology
A small phylum of worm-like invertebrates that comprises the horseshoe worms.The lophophorates comprise three phyla, Brachiopoda, Phoronida, and Ectoprocta (also known as Bryozoa) that share a ciliated feeding organ known as the lophophore....
- Instead, Rouse's conclusion that ‘groups such as the Arthropoda, Brachiopoda, Chaetognatha, Ectoprocta, Gastrotricha, Phoronida may have lost a prototroch’ is totally gratuitous, and remains unaddressed by his own data.
- Many recent textbooks unite Ectoprocta, Phoronida and Brachiopoda under the name Lophophorata, a name introduced by Hyman, apparently because she did not like the much older name Tentaculata.
Derivatives
phoronid
- Hollow cavities in the bodies of animals (except for the gut) are called coeloms: for all brachiopods, phoronids and bryozoans, the hollow cavity in the lophophore is the second of the three divisions of the coelom in the entire body.
- Although the group was first documented in 1555, their phylogenetic affinities are obscure; they have been variously related to holothurians, echiurids, priapulids, phoronids, and annelids.
- Ectoprocts, phoronids and brachiopods are often dealt with under the heading Tentaculata or Lophophorata, sometimes with entoprocts discussed in the same chapter, for example in Ruppert and Barnes.
Origin
Modern Latin (plural), from Latin Phoronis, Phoronid-, the name of a character in Greek mythology.