Xenoturbella is a deuterostome that eats molluscs

Sarah J. Bourlat, Claus Nielsen, Anne E. Lockyer, D. Timothy J. Littlewood and Maximilian J. Telford ()
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Sarah J. Bourlat: University Museum of Zoology, Department of Zoology
Claus Nielsen: Zoological Museum (University of Copenhagen)
Anne E. Lockyer: The Natural History Museum
D. Timothy J. Littlewood: The Natural History Museum
Maximilian J. Telford: University Museum of Zoology, Department of Zoology

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6951, 925-928

Abstract: Abstract Xenoturbella bocki, first described in 1949 (ref. 1), is a delicate, ciliated, marine worm with a simple body plan: it lacks a through gut, organized gonads, excretory structures and coelomic cavities. Its nervous system is a diffuse nerve net with no brain. Xenoturbella's affinities have long been obscure and it was initially linked to turbellarian flatworms1. Subsequent authors considered it variously as related to hemichordates and echinoderms owing to similarities of nerve net and epidermal ultrastructure2,3, to acoelomorph flatworms based on body plan and ciliary ultrastructure4,5,6 (also shared by hemichordates7), or as among the most primitive of Bilateria8. In 1997 two papers seemed to solve this uncertainty: molecular phylogenetic analyses9 placed Xenoturbella within the bivalve molluscs, and eggs and larvae resembling those of bivalves were found within specimens of Xenoturbella10,11. This molluscan origin implies that all bivalve characters are lost during a radical metamorphosis into the adult Xenoturbella. Here, using data from three genes, we show that the samples in these studies were contaminated by bivalve embryos eaten by Xenoturbella and that Xenoturbella is in fact a deuterostome related to hemichordates and echinoderms.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1038/nature01851

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