Theme 2 Flashcards
Opisthokonts
- Animals, fungi, choanoflagellates
- single posterior (opisthios) flagellum (kontos)
- Flattened cristae in mitochondria (but variable)
Choanoflagellates
- opisthokont eukaryotes
- sessile
- closest to Animalia among opisthokonts
- “collar” around the flagellum consists of contractile microfibrils
- currents set up by flagellar action carry food particles into collar, trapped and carried down to cell – filter feeding
- choanocytes in Porifera (sponges) strongly resemble individual choanoflagellates
Origins of Opisthokont ANIMALS
Likely originated from a colony of choanoflagellates
Opisthokont ANIMALS
- Multicellular eukaryote
- Chemoheterotrophic
- Cell membranes contact adjacent cell membranes (no cell walls)
- Motile (capable of self-directed movement at some life stage)
- Oxidative Phosphorylation to supply ATP
- Sense and respond to the environment rapidly
- Extracellular digestion
- Sexual reproduction featuring eggs and sperm
- Sperm and eggs are single cells
- Diploid is dominant (usually), haploid short-lived
- 3 diagnostic characteristics, only found in animals: Develop from a blastula, Certain extracellular matrix molecules (e.g. the proteoglycan collagen), Certain cell-cell membrane junctions
Archaeplastida PLANTS
- multicellular eukaryote
- photoautotrophic (mostly) – fix inorganic carbon using light energy
- Cell walls– cell membranes not in contact
- Sessile
- Alternation of generations life cycle
- haploid (gametophyte) stage alternates with a diploid (sporophyte) stage
- both are prominent/multicellular
Secondary endosymbiosis:
- heterotrophic eukaryote cell engulfs symbiotic photoautotrophic eukaryote
- photoautotroph evolves into chloroplast with four membranes
Opisthokonts and Archaeplastida Diverge
- Cell Structures differ
- In plants, we see: cell wall, large vacuole, chloroplasts
- Photoautotrophs vs. chemoheterotrophs
- Mobility (in Plants): don’t need to move to acquire energy and carbon, but move in different ways i.e growing
- Mobility and motility (in Animals): Eat things to acquire energy and carbon, must be mobile (usually) to acquire food, many consequences of being mobile
- Most animals are diploid as the dominant stage with haploid stage reduced to unicellular gametes
- Alternation of Generations in land plants
Consequences of being mobile for animals:
- Muscle
- Well developed senses and cephalization
- Nervous systems
- Digestive system
- Excretory system – eliminate nitrogenous wastes
- Skeletal system – endo- and exo-, hydrostatic
locomotory mechanism - High metabolic rate – cells; requires bulk flow and gas exchange systems
Classification of Plants and Animals
- systematics is the science of classification of the living world (including fossil forms)
- Organisms classified/grouped based on inferences of evolutionary relatedness: genetics, morphology, physiology, behaviour, heritable traits – shared derived characters
- use cladistic principles to derive phylogenies for the groups that we are classifying
What is a clade?
a monophyletic group composed of taxa with a unique common ancestor and sharing synapomorphies (shared derived characters)
cladistic phylogenies are:
hypotheses, which estimate evolutionary relationships based upon distribution and congruence of synapomorphies
- can be used to make predictions about data not yet found (intermediate forms, fossil history)
the likeliest phylogeny is the one requiring the least amount of:
proposed evolutionary change in a character – the most parsimonious
History Of Animals – The Cambrian Explosion
- Burgess Shale fauna – 525-515 Mya
- first diverse fauna of large complex multicellular animals
- first recognizable representatives of most modern animal phyla
- first fauna with eyes and jaws
- first fauna with bilaterian component
The Cambrian Explosion
sudden appearance of this diverse complex fauna, apparently without antecedents
Homeotic genes
Genes specifying the development of specific structures at particular locations during embryogenesis - responsible for symmetry, antero-posterior and dorso-ventral axes
Appear to be strongly conserved among Animalia
How do homeotic genes map onto phylogenies?
Predictions:
- strong relationship between chronological order of appearance of major groups, morphological complexity and body size, and number of homeotic genes
- unique body plans associated with unique homeotic genes