Cement glands

Cement glands are small organs found in Acanthocephala that are used to temporarily close the posterior end of the female after copulation.^[1]

Diagram of a male P. lauroi showing the anterior and posterior testes, and eight cement glands in a clustered arrangement.

Cement glands are also mucus-secreting organs that can attach embryos or larvae to a solid substrate. These can be found in frogs such as those in the genus Xenopus,^[2] fish such as the Mexican tetra,^[3] and crustaceans.

References

1. Bush, Albert O.; Fernández, Jacqueline C.; Esch, Gerald W.; Seed, J. Richard (2001). Parasitism : the diversity and ecology of animal parasites. Cambridge, UK New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 203. ISBN 0-521-66278-8. OCLC 44131774.
2. Sive, Hazel; Bradley, Leila (1996). "A sticky problem: The Xenopus cement gland as a paradigm for anteroposterior patterning". Developmental Dynamics. 205 (3): 265–280. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0177(199603)205:3<265::AID-AJA7>3.0.CO;2-G. PMID 8850563. S2CID 22326745. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
3. Pottin, Karen; Hyacinthe, Carole; Rétaux, Sylvie (October 5, 2010). "Conservation, development, and function of a cement gland-like structure in the fish Astyanax mexicanus". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (40): 17256–17261. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10717256P. doi:10.1073/pnas.1005035107. PMC 2951400. PMID 20855623.