Logo Logo
Help
Contact
Switch Language to German

Yang, Jie; Ortega-Hernández, Javier; Butterfield, Nicholas J.; Liu, Yu; Boyan, George; Hou, Jin-bo; Lan, Tian and Zhang, Xi-guang (2016): Fuxianhuiid ventral nerve cord and early nervous system evolution in Panarthropoda. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 113, No. 11: pp. 2988-2993

Full text not available from 'Open Access LMU'.

Abstract

Panarthropods are typified by disparate grades of neurological organization reflecting a complex evolutionary history. The fossil record offers a unique opportunity to reconstruct early character evolution of the nervous system via exceptional preservation in extinct representatives. Here we describe the neurological architecture of the ventral nerve cord (VNC) in the upper-stem group euarthropod Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis from the early Cambrian Xiaoshiba Lagerstatte (South China). The VNC of C. kunmingensis comprises a homonymous series of condensed ganglia that extend throughout the body, each associated with a pair of biramous limbs. Submillimetric preservation reveals numerous segmental and intersegmental nerve roots emerging from both sides of the VNC, which correspond topologically to the peripheral nerves of extant Priapulida and Onychophora. The fuxianhuiid VNC indicates that ancestral neurological features of Ecdysozoa persisted into derived members of stem-group Euarthropoda but were later lost in crown-group representatives. These findings illuminate the VNC ground pattern in Panarthropoda and suggest the independent secondary loss of cycloneuralian-like neurological characters in Tardigrada and Euarthropoda.

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item