Biodiversity - animals Flashcards
Approximately what percent of animals are vertebrates?
5%
How many common ancestors do animals have?
One - monophyletic group
What are the morphological features of animals?
- Eukaryotes
- multicellular, held together by collagen
- Heterotrophic, feed by ingestion (usually)
- Muscle and nervous tissue unique
- Lack cell walls (instead supported by extracellular collagen matrix
- Unique cell junctions
- Tight junctions
- Desmosomes
- Gap junctions
- hox genes (regulate form and function of animal development - complexity correlates with number of hox genes)
What are the life history features of animals?
- Most reproduce sexually
- Life cycle dominated by diploid stage
- Small flagellate sperm fertilises non-motile egg (heterogametes)
- Blastula (hollow ball of cells) in early development
What is the hollow inside of a blastula called?
What occurs after the blastula stage?
Blastocoel
- gastrulation (invagination) occurs, forming a gastrula with endoderm, ectoderm and in most animals mesoderm, as well as a blastopore
What is the common ancestor of all animals believed to be?
A colonial heterotrophic flagellate similar to a choanoflagellate protozoan
- closely resemble simple metazoan cells (collar of microvillae for filter feeding, single flagella (resembling cilia in animals), similar mitochondrial structure & DNA evidence)
Ontogeny reflects…
phylogeny (evolutionary history)
Animals can be … or … symmetrical?
Radially, bilaterally
Gastrulation results in…
at least 2 tissue layers (endoderm and ectoderm)
Radiata are … whereas bilateria are …
Diploblastic, triploblastic
- bilateral symmetry leads to cephalisation (development of CNS) and active lifestyle
What is the coelom like in pseudocoelomates?
Not completely lined with mesoderm - e.g. roundworms Nematoda)
What do acoelomates have?
A solid body between the digestive tract and outer body wall - lack digestive tract or incomplete without anus - e.g. flatworms
What are the benefits of having a coelom (body cavity)?
- protection
- allows organ growth
- allows movement (“hydrostatic skeleton”) when combined with muscles
What are the four factors which differentiate protostomes from deuterostomes?
- cleavage (protostomes spiral cleavage, deuterostomes radial
- cell fate during early development (determinate in protostomes, indeterminate in deuterostomes)
- coelom formation (schizocoelous in protostomes -solid masses split-, enterocoelous in deuterostomes - infolds)
- Fate of blastopore (in protostomes the mouth develops from the blastopore, in deuterostomes the anus develops from the blastopore)
Platyhelminthes..
used to have coelom, then lost it (what plonkers!!)
Parazoa have…
No gastrulation
No true tissues (but some specialised cells)
- simplest animals
What is phylum Porifera?
Sponges
- simple body plan
- lack muscles, nervous system, organs
- asymmetrical
- rigid, sessile, perforated sack
- feed passively by filter feeding
- water drawn in through porocytes and out of osculum
- Choanocytes are specialist feeding cells and line the inside - have flagellum - resembles ancestral choanoflagellate
- usually hemaphrodites that reproduce sexually
What are the radiata?
Have radial symmetry
Diploblastic
What is the phylum Cnidaria?
Jellyfish, corals, hydra, sea anemones
- simple form (blind sac with a gastrovascular cavity
- Mouth = anus
- polyp (mouth-up) form and medusa (mouth down) form
- No brain but simple nerve network
- contractile bundle of microtubules in epidermis act like muscles
- mesoglea acts a bit like a hydrostatic skeleton
- tentacles covered in cnidocytes for defence and capturing prey (+nematocysts)
What are the true jellyfish?
Scyphozoan
What are the box jellyfish?
Cubozoan
Hydrozoan is a colony of…
polyps, e.g. portuguese man-o-war
What are corals?
Anthozoans
What are the two groups of protostomes?
Lophotrochozoa (crown of cilia) and ecdysozoa
What are the platyhelminthes?
Flatworms phylum
- lost coelom
- mesoderm -> true organs, organ systems and muscles
- cephalisation and sensory development
- lack gas exchange and circulatory organs
What are the 3 classes of platyhelminthes?
Turbellaria - free-living marine flatworms with ganglia an eyespots
Trematoda - parasitic flukes, usually of vertebrates
Cestoidea - parasitic tapeworms with hooks and proglottids
What is the phylum annelida (lophotrochozoan)?
Segmented worms
- metamerism (linear and segmented)
- Coelom divided by septa
- Circular blood vessels + paired metanephridia
- circular and longitudinal muscles in body wall
- dorsal and ventral blood vessels (closed circulatory system)
- Digestive tract has specialised regions
- 3 classes (earthworms, marine segemented, leeches)
What are the 2 most important evolutionary features of the annelids?
- Well-developed coelom that acts as a hydrostatic skeleton, provides body space for storage and organ development, acts as a cushion for the internal organs
- metamerism - allows specialisation of regions of the body
What is the third group of lophotrochazoans?
Mollusca (snails, clams, squids)
What are the characteristics of molluscs?
- Similar body plan (foot, visceral mass, mantle + many have radula (rasping tongue))
- trochophore larval stage (with band of cilia)
- not segmented
What are the 3 main classes of molluscs?
- Gastropoda
- Bivalvia
- Cephalopoda
What are gastropods?
Snails, limpets, slugs
- shelled forms can retreat into shell when threatened
- most are marine, with terrestrial requiring damp locations
- in some snails mantle cavity serves as a lung
- radula to graze on algae and plants or even for predation
What are bivalves?
Clams and oysters
- shell divided into two halves
- body and foot laterally compressed
- head and radula lost
- gills adapted for filter feeding
- generally sedentary lifestyle
What are cephalopods?
Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish
- external shell much reduced or absent in most
- Still have mantle present
- nautilus is only living shelled cephalopod (living fossil)
- Beak like jaws
- some are venomous to immobilised prey
- foot modified into a muscular siphon and tentacles to propel them
- highly active predatory lifestyle
- only molluscs with closed circulatory system - 3 hearts - blue blood - complex eye
- chromatophores provide camouflage
- well developed CNS and brain, capable of memory and learning
Apart from the lochotrophozoa, what is the other type of protostome?
Ecdysozoa
- molting - undergo ecdysis shedding of exoskeleton)
- nematodes and arthropods
What are the nematoda?
Roundworms
- coelom not fully bounded by mesoderm (pseudocoel)
- cylindrical unsegmented body tapers at tail
- DNA closer to arthropods
- Cuticle shed during growth
- complete digestive tract with anus
- lacks circulatory system (nutrients transported in pseudocoel)
- pseuodocoel and cuticle act as hydrostatic skeleton
- Move by thrashing around
- both free-living and parasitic types
- may be most abundant multicellular animal
- c. elegans one of most important model organisms in developmental biology and genetics
What are the arthropods?
Jointed exoskeletons (chitin and protein cuticle)
- 2/3 species are arthropods
- Waterproof exoskeleton must be molted for organism to grow (vulnerable to predation and dessication)
- paired appendages
- well developed cephalisation and sensory organs - well-defined head
- metameric
- open circulatory system (haemolymph bathe internal organs)
- gills (aquatic)/tracheae (terrestrial)
What are the subgroups of arthropods?
- Trilobites
- chelicerates
- crustacea
- Uniramia
Trilobites
- extinct (permian)
- little tagmatization
- extensive metamerism
Chelicerates
Spiders, horseshoe crabs, ticks
- cephalothorax (lacking antennae) and abdomen
- First appendages are pair of chelicerae for feeding, then pedipalps (sensing or feeding), the 4 pairs of legs
- abdomen usually lacks legs
Crustacea
- two pairs of antennae
- 3 pairs of mouthpart appendages
- thorax has legs, which are branched
- abdominal segments have swimming appendages
Uniramia
Centipedes (chilopoda) and millipedes (Diplopoda - 2 legs per segment)
- unbranched appendages
- Highly metameric
Insects (Hexapoda)
- 3 tagmata (head, thorax, abdomen)
- one pair of antennae
- efficient gas exchange system through well-developed tracheal system in which tubes lead to every cell in the body
- Spiracles regulate airflow and water loss
- Sophisticated sensory organs, e.g. compound eye
- well-developed nervous system allowing complex behaviour
- one or two pairs of wings derived from outfoldings of cuticle
What are the potential origins of insect wings?
Heat absorption
Gliding from vegetation to ground
Gills or fins in aquatic ancestor
What are the echinoderms?
Starfish, sea urchins, brittle stars
- sessile or slow-moving
- Secondary radial symmetry (larvae are bilateral)
- Often radiate from central disc with 5 arms (pentamerous)
- Endoskeleton made from calcareous ossicles or plates that are DERIVED FROM MESODERM
- Water Vascular System comprising canals and sucker-like tube feet that function in locomotion, feeding and gas exchange
- ring canal, ampullae, tube feet
- no cephalisation
What are the 5 major classes of echinoderms?
- Asteroidea (starfish) - evert stomach, can regenerate arms (totipotent cells) - prey on molluscs
- Ophiuroidea (brittle stars) - distinct central disc, long highly mobile arms, often scavengers
- Echinoidea (sea urchins/sand dollars) - no arms but rows of tube feet, move slowly, grazers, jaws
- Crinoidea (sea lilies/feather stars) - ancient, use arms in suspension feeding
- Holothuroidea (sea cucumbers) - lack spines, reduced endoskeleton, elongate oral axis, tube feet adapted as tentacles for feeding
+ new class concentricycloidea (sea daisies)
When did echinoderms and chordates separate?
500MYA
What are the 4 key characteristics of the chordates?
- Notochord - long flexible rod lies between digestive tract and nerve cord in embryo, skeletal support
- Dorsal hollow nerve chord - rolled up plate of dorsal ectoderm - front end becomes brain if present
- Pharyngeal slits - slits in ‘throat’ region of the digestive tract that allow water to pass through
- Muscular post-anal tail - unlike protostomes, chordates don’t usually end in anus
What are the 3 sub-phyla of chordates?
Urochordates, cephalochordates (craniates), vertebrates (also craniates)
What are the urochordates?
Subphylum tunicates or ‘sea squirts’
- Adult is sessile, U-shaped filter-feeder (only has one chordate characteristic)
- larvae has all four classic chordate characteristics
What are the cephalochordates?
Subphylum lancelets or branchiostoma (Amphioxus)
- Live in the sand
- Lance-shaped
- Swimming motion similar to fish with side to side undulations produced by segmented muscles
- all four chordate characteristics as adult
- No real head, brain, sensory organs, heart or jaws
- No true fins but fin-like folds along body
- mouth surrounded by cirri that strain and direct food to mouth, food then collected in the pharyngeal slits, filtered by mucus
- muscle segments (Develop from blocks of mesoderm arranged along the notochords)
What are the characteristic features of subphylum vertebrata?
- Formation of neural crest during development, cells become braincase, teeth, PNS
- pronounced cephalisation with brain and sensory organs in the head
- Segmented vertebral column forms main axis of the body
- closed circulatory system with ventral cha mbered hearts - pumps oxygenated blood through complex system of capillaries and arteries
When did the first vertebrates appear?
Around 550MYA
What does agnatha mean?
Without jaws