Neuroanatomy of sea spiders implies an appendicular origin of the protocerebral segment

Amy Maxmen (), William E. Browne, Mark Q. Martindale and Gonzalo Giribet
Additional contact information
Amy Maxmen: Harvard University
William E. Browne: University of Hawaii
Mark Q. Martindale: University of Hawaii
Gonzalo Giribet: Harvard University

Nature, 2005, vol. 437, issue 7062, 1144-1148

Abstract: Arthropods get a head The arthropod body is made up of distinct body segments plus the head region. The latter causes a problem, known as the ‘arthropod head problem’, which is to explain how modern arthropod heads evolved so many different patterns of organization. A new study of modern sea spiders suggests that the scary claws of ancient Cambrian arthropods, (‘great appendages’, in the literature) have modern analogues, seen in the neuroanatomical detail of developing larvae. This excludes the theory that the anterior segment was primitively limb-free, and suggests that the arthropods lost these anteriormost limbs during evolution. A victim of this work is the ‘acron’, a hypothetical non-segmental region introduced to explain the lack of appendages in extant arthropods: they were simply hiding.

Date: 2005
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DOI: 10.1038/nature03984

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