Posted: Dec 27, 2017 2:32 pm
PZ Myers has a video on that subject: TardigradeEvoDevo - YouTube For Christmas, you get a video about tardigrades He summarizes this paper:
Smith FW, Boothby TC, Giovannini I, Rebecchi L, Jockusch EL, Goldstein B (2016) The Compact Body Plan of Tardigrades Evolved by the Loss of a Large Body Region. Curr Biol. 26(2):224-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.11.059. Epub 2016 Jan 14.
The Compact Body Plan of Tardigrades Evolved by the Loss of a Large Body Region: Current Biology
The Compact Body Plan of Tardigrades Evolved by the Loss of a Large Body Region - S0960-9822(15)01507-9.pdf
Some phylogeny: ((tardigrades, onychophorans, arthropods), nematodes and other ecdysozoans)
Tardigrades have a head segment, three body segments with a pair of legs on each one, and a rear-end segment with one pair of legs.
There are two main ways to make segments. The main way across the animal kingdom is for the head end to form first and segments to form at the rear end. Some insects, like dipterans (flies and mosquitoes), form all their segments at the same time, however, but that is most likely derived.
Segmentation is a cheap way of making new features, but it is an effective way.
Then Hox genes. Hox genes get expressed in regions along the main body axis, and their proteins then control the expression of other genes, thus indicating what each part is to develop as. Their expression patterns are remarkably similar across much of the animal kingdom, indicating that those patterns originated in some ancestor of much of it.
Compared to other animals, tardigrades lost a few forward Hox genes and most other ones, though they keep the rear-end one: Abdominal-B. Their expression patterns are still broadly similar, however.
So tardigrades are homologous to the heads and rear ends of many other animals, including most of their panarthropod relatives. Making them more-or-less disembodied heads. The nauplius phase of some crustaceans is much like that, being some segments that eventually become the animal's head.
When one considers how segments grow, it looks as if tardigrades grow the first few segments, and then stop. This suggests that tardigrades do neoteny, reaching mature form by growing only part of the way to some ancestral mature form.
Limb homologies:
Tardigrade: oc, leg1, leg2, leg3, leg4
Onychophoran: oc (ant), jaw, slpp, leg1, leg2, ...
Chelicerate: oc, chl, pdp, leg1, leg2, leg3, leg4, no legs, ...
Crustacean: oc, ant1, ant2, mth1, mth2, mth3, leg1, leg2, leg3, ...
oc = ocular, slpp = slime papilla, chl = chelicera, pdp = pedipalp, ant = antenna, mth = mouthpart
Insects and myriapods are much like crustaceans, though they have lost their second pair of antennae.
Smith FW, Boothby TC, Giovannini I, Rebecchi L, Jockusch EL, Goldstein B (2016) The Compact Body Plan of Tardigrades Evolved by the Loss of a Large Body Region. Curr Biol. 26(2):224-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.11.059. Epub 2016 Jan 14.
The Compact Body Plan of Tardigrades Evolved by the Loss of a Large Body Region: Current Biology
The Compact Body Plan of Tardigrades Evolved by the Loss of a Large Body Region - S0960-9822(15)01507-9.pdf
Some phylogeny: ((tardigrades, onychophorans, arthropods), nematodes and other ecdysozoans)
Tardigrades have a head segment, three body segments with a pair of legs on each one, and a rear-end segment with one pair of legs.
There are two main ways to make segments. The main way across the animal kingdom is for the head end to form first and segments to form at the rear end. Some insects, like dipterans (flies and mosquitoes), form all their segments at the same time, however, but that is most likely derived.
Segmentation is a cheap way of making new features, but it is an effective way.
Then Hox genes. Hox genes get expressed in regions along the main body axis, and their proteins then control the expression of other genes, thus indicating what each part is to develop as. Their expression patterns are remarkably similar across much of the animal kingdom, indicating that those patterns originated in some ancestor of much of it.
Compared to other animals, tardigrades lost a few forward Hox genes and most other ones, though they keep the rear-end one: Abdominal-B. Their expression patterns are still broadly similar, however.
So tardigrades are homologous to the heads and rear ends of many other animals, including most of their panarthropod relatives. Making them more-or-less disembodied heads. The nauplius phase of some crustaceans is much like that, being some segments that eventually become the animal's head.
When one considers how segments grow, it looks as if tardigrades grow the first few segments, and then stop. This suggests that tardigrades do neoteny, reaching mature form by growing only part of the way to some ancestral mature form.
Limb homologies:
Tardigrade: oc, leg1, leg2, leg3, leg4
Onychophoran: oc (ant), jaw, slpp, leg1, leg2, ...
Chelicerate: oc, chl, pdp, leg1, leg2, leg3, leg4, no legs, ...
Crustacean: oc, ant1, ant2, mth1, mth2, mth3, leg1, leg2, leg3, ...
oc = ocular, slpp = slime papilla, chl = chelicera, pdp = pedipalp, ant = antenna, mth = mouthpart
Insects and myriapods are much like crustaceans, though they have lost their second pair of antennae.