This typically consists of two concentric zones, the trochus and cingulum, often separated by a groove or gutter which may be finely ciliated; but in several genera of no close affinity, where it is very oblique to the longitudinal axis of the body, it is represented by a general ciliation of the surface (Taphrocampa, Rattulus, Copeus, Adineta).
Trochus, shell umbilicated, spire pointed and prominent, British.
A rotifer may be regarded as typically a hemisphere or half an oblate spheroid or paraboloid with a mouth somewhere on the flat end ("disk" or "corona"), which bears a usually double ciliated ring, the outer zone the "cingulum," and inner the "trochus".
In most rotifers, on the contrary, the trochus is stronger than the cingulum, often lobed, and with some of its cilia aggregated into vibratile styles homologous with the combplates of Ctenophora (q.v.) and the membranelles of ciliate Infusoria (q.v.).
The trochus forms the powerful currents for locomotion, and for the supply of food material, while the cingulum produces a local current round the upper rim of the corona to bring the food particles direct to the mouth, which is displaced through a postero-ventral gap in the trochus to lie behind the disk, just as occurs in the more specialized Ciliata.