Vermes ("vermin/vermes") is an obsolete taxon used by Carl Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for non-arthropod invertebrate .
Linnaeus
In Linnaeus's
Systema Naturae, the Vermes had the rank of class, occupying the 6th (and last) slot of his animal systematics. It was divided into the following orders, all except the Lithophyta containing (in modern terms) organisms from a variety of phyla:
-
Intestina, including , , , , , , and
-
Mollusca, including , , , sea mouse, , , jellyfish, starfish, and
-
Testacea, including , , , cockles, , and serpulidae
-
Lithophyta, including various
-
Zoophyta, including , coralline algae, Hydra, , , and Volvox
Apart from the , understood very differently from the modern phylum of that name, Linnaeus included a very diverse and rather mismatched assemblage of animals in the categories. The Intestina group encompassed various parasite animals, among them the hagfish, which Linnaeus would have found in dead fish. Shelled molluscs were placed in the Testacea, together with and tube worms. (jellyfish and corals), and Polychaeta were spread across the other orders.
Lamarck
Linnaeus's system was revised by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in his 1801
Système des Animaux sans Vertebres. In this work, he categorized
,
,
and
, which he separated from
Vermes.
Modern
After Linnaeus, and especially with the advent of
Darwinism, it became apparent that the Vermes animals are not closely related. Systematic works on
phylum since Linnaeus continued to split up Vermes and sort the animals into natural systematic units.
Of the classes of Vermes proposed by Linnaeus, only Mollusca has been kept as a phylum, and its composition has changed almost entirely. Linnaeus's early classification of the soft-bodied organisms was revolutionary in its day. A number of the organisms classified as Vermes by Linnaeus were very poorly known, and a number of them were not even viewed as animals.
Vermiform
While the
Vermes is no longer a taxonomic group, anatomists continue to use the description "vermiform" of animals or organs that are
worm-shaped. The word root is
Latin, vermes and formes .
A well known example is the vermiform appendix, a small, blind section of the gut in humans and a number of other
.
Several soft-bodied animal phyla including the Annelida (earthworm and relatives) and the Nematoda (mainly parasites), but also the minute parasitic and some larger-bodied free-living phyla like the Nemertea, Nemertea, and Priapulida.
