CLASSIFICATION OF CERIANTHUS
KINGDOM :- ANIMALIA ( Multicellular eukaryotic organisms)
PHYLUM :- COELENTRATA OR CNIDARIA (Tissue grade, diploblastic and acoelomate. )
CLASS :- ANTHOZOA OR ACTINOZOA (Only polypoid generation. sedentary, solitary, colonial.)
SUB-CLASS :- HEXACORALLIA (Tentacles and mesenteries in multiple of five or six.)
ORDER :- CERIANTHARIA (Without skeleton and pedal disc. Mesenteries single.)
FAMILY :- CERIANTHIDAE (Tube-dwelling anemones)
GENUS :- Cerianthus
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
Found along the Atlantic and the Pacific Coast, Cape Cod to Florida, Bay of Fundy and Mediterranean.
HABIT AND HABITAT
Cerianthus is a marine Anthozoa, adapted for burrowing life in the sand, living in vertical and cylindrical cavity in sea bottom.
GENERAL CHARACTERSTICS OF CERIANTHUS
- Best known genus of hexacorallian Anthozoa. The size varies in different species.
- It is anemone-like actinozoan with smooth, muscular, elongated, cylindrical body buried into the sand upto oral disc. The oral disc is exposed.
- Oral disc bears simple, slender tentacles arranged in two sets, an outer marginal tentacles and an inner smaller oral or labial tentacles.
- Aboral end is simply rounded and provided with terminal pore.
- There is one cycle of complete coupled septa.
- There is a single dorsal siphonoglyph.
- There is no true skeleton.
SPECIAL FEATURES
It is markedly negative to gravity soon resuming an upright position. Cerianthus has considerable power of regeneration in oral region. Cerianthus membranaceous, an inhabitant of the Mediterranean, is a favourite aquarium animal in European aquaria and has been known to live under such conditions for 10 to 40 years.
IDENTIFICATION
The animal contains short and long tentacles in oral disc a telminal pore and all above characters and hence it is Cerianthus.
