agnathan

agnathan, (superclass Agnatha), any member of the group of primitive jawless fishes that includes the lampreys (order Petromyzoniformes), hagfishes (order Myxiniformes), and several extinct groups.

Hagfishes are minor pests of commercial food fisheries of the North Atlantic, but lampreys, because of their parasitic habit, have been a serious pest of food fisheries in the Great Lakes in North America, where they have reduced the numbers of lake trout and other species. Agnathans are otherwise of little economic importance. The group is of great evolutionary interest, however, because it includes the oldest known craniate fossils and because the living agnathans have many primitive characteristics.

General features

The body of the hagfish is soft-skinned, scaleless, and nearly cylindrical, with a single nostril at the anterior end, overlying the mouth, and a low caudal fin around the tail. In some species the gills open to the surface through separate pores; however, in others the gills open to a common duct, which in turn opens to the surface through a single pore. The eyes are vestigial and covered by skin. All of the approximately 70 known species are restricted to cold, marine bottom waters at depths ranging from 10 metres (about 33 feet) in high latitudes to 1,300 metres (about 4,300 feet) in equatorial oceans. Adults are 40 to 80 cm (about 15 to 30 inches) long. All species are superficially similar except in the number and position of the gill apertures.

Lampreys, which number about 43 species, are found in cool, fresh, and coastal waters of all continents except Africa. All species are rather similar. The body is smooth, scaleless, and eel-shaped, with well-developed dorsal and caudal fins; the mouth is surrounded by a suctorial oral disk bearing horny teeth. The eyes are well developed, and the single nostril is on the top of the head. Lampreys possess seven pairs of external gills. Adults range from 15 to 100 cm (6 to 39 inches) long.

Although the gonad of a hagfish usually includes both ovary and testis, there is no evidence of either hermaphroditism (the reproductive organs of both sexes functioning in the same individual) or self-fertilization. A female produces a small number of tough-skinned yolk-filled eggs about 2 cm (0.8 inch) long that hatch into miniature adults.

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Hagfishes locate their food by scent. Although some are known to eat fishes immobilized in nets, the best-studied species, Myxine glutinosa, normally feeds on soft-bodied invertebrates and larger dead animals. Myxine burrows into soft marine sediments and rests with only the tip of the head protruding. During respiration, water enters through the nostril and passes by a nasopharyngeal duct to the pharynx and gills. When stimulated by the scent of a dead fish, Myxine leaves its burrow and swims against the current. On making contact with the fish, Myxine coils around it and bites into it by protruding and retracting the comblike horny tooth plates on the floor of the mouth. Along each side of Myxine’s body is a row of prominent glands that produce a gelatinous slime when it is disturbed.

Lampreys mate in a nestlike depression excavated by the male in the gravel bed of a stream; the numerous eggs, about 1 mm (0.04 inch) in diameter, lodge in the gravel around the nest. The egg hatches into an ammocoete larva—a blind, wormlike animal that burrows in silt. The larva’s mouth is overhung by a hoodlike upper lip that protrudes above the surface of the silt. A continuous stream of water passes in through the mouth and out through the seven pairs of gills. Microscopic plants, the food of the ammocoete, are filtered from this respiratory current by strands of mucus produced by the endostyle, which is a gland in the floor of the pharynx.

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After about three years, when the ammocoete has grown to about 10 cm (about 4 inches), it undergoes a radical metamorphosis. The eyes complete their development; the upper lip becomes transformed into a suctorial oral disk; the endostyle changes into a thyroid gland; and the fins along the back increase in height. On completion of metamorphosis, a typical lamprey such as the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) migrates to the sea, where it feeds by attaching itself with its sucker to bony fishes. It rasps into the flesh with a toothed, tonguelike structure on the floor of the mouth. Saliva containing an anticoagulant facilitates the ingestion of blood and muscle tissue. On attaining full adult size, the lamprey ceases to feed, migrates upstream to a spawning ground, mates, and dies.

Members of several lamprey species do not migrate to sea but feed in fresh water. Petromyzon marinus dorsatus once seriously affected commercial fishing in the Great Lakes until measures were undertaken to control it. The brook lampreys do not feed after metamorphosis but mature sexually, reproduce, and die.

Form and function

The elongated bodies of hagfishes and lampreys are adaptations to a burrowing habit, throughout life in the hagfish but only during the larval period in the lamprey. Considerable variation in body form occurs among extinct agnathans. Some Osteostraci, for example, possessed a flattened head shield and, although possessing a powerful swimming tail, appear to have been bottom dwellers. The size and shape of the mouth suggest that they were filter feeders. The laterally compressed, fishlike form of the anaspids (such as Pharyngolepis) indicates a free-swimming habit. The extinct heterostracans include obvious bottom dwellers (Drepanaspis) and others (Pteraspis) that were apparently adapted to mid-water, or nektonic, life. Some heterostracans, for example, had movable enamel plates inside the lower lip, probably to provide a biting or grazing mechanism. Osteostracans, anaspids, hagfishes, and lampreys have one median nostril, but heterostracans appear to have had two, one at each corner of the mouth.