Paracatenula is a genus of millimeter sized free-living marine gutless catenulid flatworms.[Ref 1]
Paracatenula spp. are found worldwide in warm temperate to tropical subtidal sediments. They are part of the interstitial meiofauna of sandy sediments. Adult Paracatenula lack a mouth and a gut and are associated with intracellular symbiotic alphaproteobacteria of the genus Candidatus. Riegeria.[Ref 2][Ref 3]
The symbionts are housed in bacteriocytes in a specialized organ, the trophosome (Greek τροφοςtrophos ‘food’). Ca. Riegeria can make up half of the worms' biomass.[Ref 3][Ref 4] The beneficial symbiosis with the carbon dioxide fixing and sulfur-oxidizing endosymbionts allows the marine flatworm to live in nutrient poor environments. The symbionts not only provide the nutrition but also maintain the primary energy reserves in the symbiosis.[Ref 5]
A flatworm, Paracatenula sp., elegantly moving in the sediment. The white trophosome contains endosymbionts while the anterior transparent part of the worm, called rostrum, is bacteria-free.
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Paracatenula is a genus of millimeter sized free-living marine gutless catenulid flatworms. Paracatenula spp. are found worldwide in warm temperate to...
Riftia pachyptila) and in the body of symbiotic flatworms of the genus Paracatenula. Initially, the trophosome in frenulates and vestimentiferans, which...
name, from Latin catenula, small chain. Members of the symbiotic genus Paracatenula lack a digestive tract, and instead harbor intracellular chemoautotrophic...
Ott, Jörg A. (2011-12-01). "Microanatomy of the trophosome region of Paracatenula cf. polyhymnia (Catenulida, Platyhelminthes) and its intracellular symbionts"...
inside the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the first known symbiont to do so. Paracatenula is a flatworm which have lived in symbiosis with an endosymbiotic bacteria...
anus and regurgitate undigested material through the mouth. The genus Paracatenula, whose members include tiny flatworms living in symbiosis with bacteria...
Zoothamnium niveum, oligochaete worm Olavius algarvensis, and flatworm Paracatenula. "WoRMS - World Register of Marine Species - Kentrophoros Sauerbrey,...
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