The reproductive tract then opens to the outside about halfway down the length of the body. Having only one ovary is unique for members of this particular nematode family, at least among the species formally described. One of the authors reports seeing another new genus in the same family from a Philippine millipede that also has one ovary. Nematodes in the Applied and Theoretical Sciences Nematodes affect our lives in numerous ways. Your local supermarket can be the best place to begin your own nematode collection, and vegetarians worldwide have to accept the fact that every day they eat numerous different kinds of nematodes, which are as every bit animals as cows.
Parasitic nematodes kill our crops, our pets, and our fellow men and women.
Thus is may seem that the only reason to study these animals is to discover which are harmful and how to eradicate them. Actually, though, nematodes hold great promise in numerous fields simply because they are so numerous and diverse. Essentially, the idea behind a bioindicator is that scientists can monitor environmental changes by comparing the abundance of certain species to a good set of baseline data. The smaller, more ubiquitous, and more diverse the species studied, the easier it is to collect useful data and continue collecting data going forward. Tigers do not make good bioindicators simply because they are too rare and shy to provide much data.