Morphology of the anterior digestive system of tonnoideans (Gastropoda: Caenogastropoda) with an emphasis on the foregut glands

ABSTRACT

Tonnoideans are marine carnivorous caenogastropods that prey on different invertebrates, namely polychaetes, sipunculids, bivalve and gastropod molluscs, and echinoderms. The morphology of the digestive system of 20 species from five families of the Tonnoidea was examined (for most of these species for the first time), and the salivary glands of six of them were studied using serial histological sections. Most of the studied families are rather similar anatomically, except Personidae (Distorsio), which differs both in proboscis morphology and the structure of the salivary glands. In most tonnoideans the salivary glands are split morphologically and functionally into anterior and posterior lobes, the latter synthesising strong sulfuric acid. The ducts of the posterior lobes are lined with non-ciliated epithelium and receive usually paired ciliated ducts from the anterior lobes to form a non-ciliated common duct, opening into the buccal cavity. In Personidae, the salivary glands are not separated into lobes, but are instead composed of ramifying tubules that are histologically different in the proximal and distal parts. Radulae of Tonnoidea are rather variable, with different patterns of interlocking teeth, both in the transverse and longitudinal rows, which may be related to particular feeding mechanisms. Due to the peculiarities of Personidae, the close relationship between that family and the rest of the Tonnoidea is questioned.

KEYWORDS:

• Feeding
• oesophageal gland
• proboscis morphology
• radula
• salivary glands

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Russian-Vietnamese Tropical Centre and the authors want to thank their Vietnamese colleagues, especially Vo Thi Ha and Nguyen Van Quang for their help with collecting material. We also greatly indebted to Sofya Zvonareva, Polina Dgebuadze and Ivan Marin from the Laboratory of Ecology of Marine Invertebrates of IEE RAS for help during the fieldwork in Vietnam. We want to thank N. Surovenkova from IEE RAS for her assistance with scanning electron microscopy. Our special thanks go to Winston Ponder and Rosemary Golding for reviewing and editing the manuscript and for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Yuri I. Kantor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3209-4940

Additional information

Funding

This work is partially financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research [grant number 14-04-00481] (PI Kantor Yu.I.).