Morphology
Trichoplax generally has a thinly flattened, plate-like body in cross-section around half a millimetre, occasionally up to two or three millimetres. The body is usually only about 25 µm thick. These colorlessly gray organisms are so thin they are transparent when illuminated from behind, and in most cases are barely visible to the naked eye. Like the amoebae, which they superficially resemble, they continually change their external shape. In addition, spherical phases occasionally form. These may facilitate movement to new habitats.
Trichoplax lacks tissues and organs; there is also no manifest body symmetry, so it is not possible to distinguish anterior from posterior or left from right. It is made up of a few thousand cells of four types in three distinct layers: dorsal and ventral epithelia cells each with a single cilium ("monociliate"), ventral gland cells and syncytial fiber cells. It does not possess sensory or muscle cells; it moves using cilia on its external surface.
Read more about this topic: Trichoplax Adhaerens
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