Question:

Pheretima posthuma is highly useful as

Updated On: Jul 28, 2022
  • their burrows make the soil loose
  • they make the soil porous, leave their castings and take organic debris in the soil
  • they are used as fish meal
  • they kill the birds due to biomagnification of chlorinated hydrocarbons.
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The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

Pheretima posthuma is highly useful and beneficial in agriculture. Its habit of burrowing and swallowing earth makes it porous and increases the soil fertility in many ways. Their burrows permit penetration of air and moisture in porous soil and their excretory wastes and other secretions also enrich soil by adding nitrogenous matters to the soil. Pheretima posthuma is not used as fish meal. Whereas a small white earthworm (Enchytraeus alhidus) is often grown in soil and used to feed aquarium fish.
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Concepts Used:

Earthworm

An earthworm is a terrestrial invertebrate that is to the phylum Annelida. They display a tube-within-a-tube body plan; they are externally subdivided with corresponding internal subdivision, and they usually have setae on all divisions. They arise worldwide where soil, water, and temperature allow.

Generally, earthworms are found in soil, eating a wide variety of organic matter. This organic matter incorporates plant matter, rotifers, nematodes, bacteria, living protozoa, fungi, and other microorganisms. An earthworm's digestive system runs the expanse of its body. An earthworm respires throughout its skin. It has a double transport system made up of coelomic fluid that goes within the fluid-filled coelom and a simple, closed circulatory system.

It has a nervous system - “central and peripheral”. Its central nervous system comprises two ganglia above the mouth, one on either side, connected to a nerve running along its length to motor neurons and sensory cells in each segment. Large numbers of chemoreceptors concentrate close to its mouth.

Read More: Reproductive System of Earthworm