somatic muscle tile the length of the worm. each cell has a thin muscle arm that projects to the nerve ring, ventral nerve cord (nematodes), or dorsal nerve cord that comes off each cell. the muscle arm makes en passant synapses to motor neurons. muscle arms have gap junctions which couple adjacent muscle cells enabling smooth locomotion.
noteably, the neuromuscular junction synapses are in the nerve cords not on the surface of the muscle!
