![]() ![]() The worms then separate and go on about their life and the next stage of reproduction: forming the cocoon and filling it with eggs and sperm. Once this sperm storage happens, the actual mating is complete. Inside the membrane, sperm passes from each worm to the other.Įach worm then stores the sperm from the other worm in their seminal receptacle. This mucus protects the worms as they mate. ![]() Once the worms touch and connect at the clitellum, they both exude a mucous membrane that envelops them completely. When mating happens, two worms join together by coming in contact at the clitellum, with their heads pointed in opposite directions. Inside the clitellum are both female and male reproductive organs. So the researchers concluded that the only way the sperm made it to the head is by the worms stabbing themselves in the noggin with their, um, "copulatory organ." The sperm then traveled downward through the body toward the eggs.When worms are around six weeks old, this clitellum forms. The flatworms have a "needle-like copulatory organ" that they use to inject their sperm during reproduction. The researchers later noticed that some of these transparent worms, the isolated ones, didn't carry sperm in the rear portion of their bodies, but instead had most of their sperm in the front part of their bodies closer to their head. Researchers set up a test to see how these creatures reproduce asexually by placing them in a manipulated social environment in which some of the flatworms would be forced to resort to their "selfing mechanism," according to the study's abstract. Some of these little flatworms have male and female sets of genitalia, and if they can't find a flatworm to mate with, they will inseminate themselves, a practice also known as "selfing." Flatworms of the Macrostomum hystrix variety only resort to injecting themselves as a backup plan. ![]()
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