Circulatory system of chordates

Contents

1.      Circulatory system…………………………………………….  3

2.      What are chordates?...................................................................  3

3.      General features of circulation……………………………….    3-4

4.      Body fluids……………………………………………………   5

5.      Fluid compartments…………………………………………..    5-6

6.      Blood………………………………………………………....    6

7.      Hearts…………………………...……………………………    7-8

8.      The Flow of Blood inside the Heart………………………….    8-9

9.      References……………………………………………………..  10

Circulatory system, system that transports nutrients, respiratory gases, and metabolic products throughout a living organism, permitting integration among the various tissues. The process of circulation includes the intake of metabolic materials, the conveyance of these materials throughout the organism, and the return of harmful by-products to the environment.

What are chordates?

Chordate, any member of the phylum Chordata, which includes the vertebrates, the most highly evolved animals, as well as two other subphyla the tunicates and cephalochordates. Some classifications also include the phylum Hemichordate with the chordates.

As the name implies, at some time in the life cycle a chordate possesses a stiff, dorsal supporting rod (the notochord). Also characteristic of the chordates are a tail that extends behind and above the anus, a hollow nerve cord above the gut, gill slits opening from the pharynx to the exterior, and an endostyle, its derivative between the gill slits. (A characteristic feature may be present only in the developing embryo and may disappear as the embryo matures into the adult form.) A somewhat similar body plan can be found in the closely related phylum Hemichordata.

General features of circulation

All living organisms take in molecules from their environments, use them to support the metabolism of their own substance, and release by-products back into the environment. The internal environment differs more or less greatly from the external environment, depending on the species. It is normally maintained at constant conditions by the organism so that it is subject to relatively minor fluctuations. In individual cells, either as independent organisms or as parts of the tissues of multicellular animals, molecules are taken in either by their direct diffusion through the cell wall or by the formation by the surface membrane of vacuoles that carry some of the environmental fluid containing dissolved molecules. Within the cell, cyclosis (streaming of the fluid cytoplasm) distributes the metabolic products.

Molecules are normally conveyed between cells and throughout the body of multicellular organisms in a circulatory fluid, called blood, through special channels, called blood vessels, by some form of pump, which, if restricted in position, is usually called a heart. In vertebrates blood and lymph (the circulating fluids) have an essential role in maintaining homeostasis (the constancy of the internal environment) by distributing substances to parts of the body when required and by removing others from areas in which their accumulation would be harmful.

An internal circulatory system transports essential gases and nutrients around the body of an organism, removes unwanted products of metabolism from the tissues, and carries these products to specialized excretory organs, if present. Although a few invertebrate animals circulate external water through their bodies for respiration, and, in the case of cnidarians, nutrition, most species circulate an internal fluid, called blood. There may also be external circulation that sets up currents in the environmental fluid to carry it over respiratory surfaces and, especially in the case of sedentary animals, to carry particulate food that is strained out and passed to the alimentary canal. Additionally, the circulatory system may assist the organism in movement; for example, protoplasmic streaming in amoeboid protozoans circulates nutrients and provides pseudopodal locomotion. The hydrostatic pressure built up in the circulatory systems of many invertebrates is used for a range of whole-body and individual-organ movement.

Body fluids

The fluid compartments of animals consist of intracellular and extracellular components. The intracellular component includes the body cells and, where present, the blood cells, while the extracellular component includes the tissue fluid, coelomic fluid, and blood plasma. In all cases the major constituent is water derived from the environment. The composition of the fluid varies markedly depending on its source and is regulated more or less precisely by homeostasis.

Lymph essentially consists of blood plasma that has left the blood vessels and has passed through the tissues. It is generally considered to have a separate identity when it is returned to the bloodstream through a series of vessels independent of the blood vessels and the coelomic space. Coelomic fluid itself may circulate in the body cavity. In most cases this circulation has an apparently random nature, mainly because of movements of the body and organs. In some phyla, however, the coelomic fluid has a more important role in internal distribution and is circulated by ciliary tracts.

Fluid compartments

 

Blood is circulated through vessels of the blood vascular system. Blood is moved through this system by some form of pump. The simplest pump, or heart, may be no more than a vessel along which a wave of contraction passes to propel the blood. This simple, tubular heart is adequate where low blood pressure and relatively slow circulation rates are sufficient to supply the animal’s metabolic requirements, but it is inadequate in larger, more active, and more demanding species. In the latter animals, the heart is usually a specialized, chambered, muscular pump that receives blood under low pressure and returns it under higher pressure to the circulation. Where the flow of blood is in one direction, as is normally the case, valves in the form of flaps of tissue prevent backflow.

Contraction of the ventricle forces the blood into the vessels under pressure, known as the blood pressure. As contraction continues in the ventricle, the rising pressure is sufficient to open the valves that had been closed because of attempted reverse blood flow during the previous cycle. At this point the ventricular pressure transmits a high-speed wave, the pulse, through the blood of the arterial system. The volume of blood pumped at each contraction of the ventricle is known as the stroke volume, and the output is usually dependent on the animal’s activity.

After leaving the heart, the blood passes through a series of branching vessels of steadily decreasing diameter. Although such structural differences are less apparent in invertebrates, the terms artery and vein are used for vessels that carry blood from and to the heart, respectively. The closed circulatory system found in vertebrates is not universal; a number of invertebrate phyla have an “open” system. In the latter animals, the blood leaving the heart passes into a series of open spaces, called sinuses, where it bathes internal organs directly. Such a body cavity is called a hemocoel, a term that reflects the amalgamation of the blood system and the coelom.

 

Blood

 

The primary body cavity (coelom) of triploblastic multicellular organisms arises from the central mesoderm, which emerges from between the endoderm and ectoderm during embryonic development. The fluid of the coelom containing free mesodermal cells constitutes the blood and lymph. The composition of blood varies between different organisms and within one organism at different stages during its circulation. Essentially, however, the blood consists of an aqueous plasma containing sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, chloride, and sulfate ions; some trace elements; a number of amino acids; and possibly a protein known as a respiratory pigment. If present in invertebrates, the respiratory pigments are normally dissolved in the plasma and are not enclosed in blood cells. The constancy of the ionic constituents of blood and their similarity to seawater have been used by some scientists as evidence of a common origin for life in the sea.

While the solubility of oxygen in blood plasma is adequate to supply the tissues of some relatively sedentary invertebrates, more active animals with increased oxygen demands require an additional oxygen carrier. The oxygen carriers in blood take the form of metal-containing protein molecules that frequently are colored and thus commonly known as respiratory pigments. The most widely distributed respiratory pigments are the red hemoglobin’s, which have been reported in all classes of vertebrates, in most invertebrate phyla, and even in some plants. Hemoglobin consist of a variable number of subunits, each containing an iron–porphyrin group attached to a protein. The distribution of hemoglobin in just a few members of a phylum and in many different phyla argues that the hemoglobin type of molecule must have evolved many times with similar iron–porphyrin groups and different proteins.

The green chloro cruor INS are also iron–porphyrin pigments and are found in the blood of a number of families of marine polychaetes worms. There is a close resemblance between chlorocruorin and hemoglobin molecules, and a number of species of a genus, such as those of Serpula, contain both, while some closely related species exhibit an almost arbitrary distribution. For example, Spirorbis borealis has chlorocruorin, S. corrugatus has hemoglobin, and S. militaris has neither.

The third iron-containing pigments, the hemerythrins, are violet. They differ structurally from both hemoglobin and chlorocruorin in having no porphyrin groups and containing three times as much iron, which is attached directly to the protein. Hemerythrins are restricted to a small number of animals, including some polychaetes and sipunculid worms, the brachiopod Lingula, and some priapulids.

Hemocyanins are copper-containing respiratory pigments found in many mollusks (some bivalves, many gastropods, and cephalopods) and arthropods (many crustaceans, some arachnids, and the horseshoe crab, Limulus). They are colourless when deoxygenated but turn blue on oxygenation. The copper is bound directly to the protein, and oxygen combines reversibly in the proportion of one oxygen molecule to two copper atoms.

The presence of a respiratory pigment greatly increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood; invertebrate blood may contain up to 10 percent oxygen with the pigment, compared with about 0.3 percent in the absence of the pigment. All respiratory pigments become almost completely saturated with oxygen even at oxygen levels, or pressures, below those normally found in air or water. The oxygen pressures at which the various pigments become saturated depend on their individual chemical characteristics and on such conditions as temperature, pH, and the presence of carbon dioxide.

In addition to their direct transport role, respiratory pigments may temporarily store oxygen for use during periods of respiratory suspension or decreased oxygen availability (hypoxia). They may also act as buffers to prevent large blood pH fluctuations, and they may have an osmotic function that helps to reduce fluid loss from aquatic organisms whose internal hydrostatic pressure tends to force water out of the body.

 

Hearts

 

All systems involving the consistent movement of circulating fluid require at least one repeating pump and, if flow is to be in one direction, usually some arrangement of valves to prevent backflow. The simplest form of animal circulatory pump consists of a blood vessel down which passes a wave of muscular contraction, called peristalsis, that forces the enclosed blood in the direction of contraction. Valves may or may not be present. This type of heart is widely found among invertebrates, and there may be many pulsating vessels in a single individual.

An elaboration of the simple peristaltic heart is found in the tubular heart of most arthropods, in which part of the dorsal vessel is expanded to form one or more linearly arranged chambers with muscular walls. The walls are perforated by pairs of lateral openings (ostia) that allow blood to flow into the heart from a large surrounding sinus, the pericardium. The heart may be suspended by alary muscles, contraction of which expands the heart and increases blood flow into it. The direction of flow is controlled by valves arranged in front of the in-current ostia.

Chambered hearts with valves and relatively thick muscular walls are less commonly found in invertebrates but do occur in some mollusks, especially cephalopods (octopus and squid). Blood from the gills enters one to four auricles (depending on the species) and is passed back to the tissues by contraction of the ventricle. The direction of flow is controlled by valves between the chambers. The filling and emptying of the heart are controlled by regular rhythmical contractions of the muscular wall.

In addition to the main systemic heart, many species have accessory booster hearts at critical points in the circulatory system. Cephalopods have special muscular dilations, the branchial hearts, that pump blood through the capillaries, and insects may have additional ampulla hearts at the points of attachment of many of their appendages.

The control of heart rhythm may be either myogenic (originating within the heart muscle itself) or neurogenic (originating in nerve ganglia). The hearts of the invertebrate mollusks, like those of vertebrates, are myogenic. They are sensitive to pressure and fail to give maximum beats unless distended; the beats become stronger and more frequent with increasing blood pressure. Although under experimental conditions acetylcholine (a substance that transmits nerve impulses across a synapse) inhibits molluscan heartbeat, indicating some stimulation of the heart muscle by the nervous system, cardiac muscle contraction will continue in excised hearts with no connection to the central nervous system. Tunicate hearts have two non-innervated, myogenic pacemakers, one at each end of the peristaltic pulsating vessel. Separately, each pacemaker causes a series of normal beats followed by a sequence of abnormal ones; together, they provide periodic reversals of blood flow.

The control of heartbeat in most other invertebrates is neurogenic, and one or more nerve ganglia with attendant nerve fibres control contraction. Removal of the ganglia stops the heart, and the administration of acetylcholine increases its rate. Adult heart control may be neurogenic but not necessarily in all stages in the life cycle. The embryonic heart may show myogenic peristaltic contractions prior to innervation.

Heart rate differs markedly among species and under different physiological states of a given individual. In general it is lower in sedentary or sluggish animals and faster in small ones. The rate increases with internal pressure but often reaches a plateau at optimal pressures. Normally, increasing the body temperature 10° C (50° F) causes an increase in heart rate of two to three times. Oxygen availability and the presence of carbon dioxide affect the heart rate, and during periods of hypoxia the heart rate may decrease to almost a standstill to conserve oxygen stores.The time it takes for blood to complete a single circulatory cycle is also highly variable but tends to be much longer in invertebrates than in vertebrates. For example, in isolation, the circulation rate in mammals is about 10 to 30 seconds, for crustaceans about one minute, for cockroaches five to six minutes, and for other insects almost 30 minutes.

The Flow of Blood inside the Heart

Blood from the posterior portion of the body enters the right atrium of the heart through the inferior vena cava and the superior vena cava. Blood flows from the right atrium to the right ventricle via the tricuspid valve. Label each on the diagram. Blood is then pumped through the pulmonary semilunar valve and into the pulmonary trunk where blood travels to the lungs. Blood then flows through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs where it is oxygenated and then returns from the lungs to enter the left atrium via four pulmonary veins. Only one of these is visible on the diagram, a tiny vessel on the right side.  Blood goes from the left atrium to the left ventricle via the bicuspid (or mitral) valve.

Blood leaves the left ventricle of the heart through the aortic semilunar valve and enters the aorta. The aorta has a visible arch with vessels that lead to the head before the artery descends into the rat's thoracic cavity.