Comparative Anatomy embryonic development (the Postanal tail is

relatively less critical to development)

Because of the primacy of these structures
Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy
in protochordates and vertebrates alike,
these two groups have been incorporated
• is the study of the structure of vertebrates
into a single taxon, or classification category,
(descriptive morphology) and of the
the phylum Chordata.
functional significance of structure
• The taxonomic relationship of
(functional morphology).
protochordates and vertebrates is as
• Because structure entails development of
follows:
the individual (ontogenesis), and individuals
• Kingdom Animalia
have an ancestral history (phylogenesis), the
• Phylum Chordata
discipline embraces these areas of inquiry as
• Subphylum
well.
Urochordata
• EcoIogy embryology genetics. molecular
• Subphylum
bioLogy, serology, biochemistry, and
Cephalochordata
paleobiology are all sources of valuable data.
• Subphylum Craniata
• To the extent that comparative anatomy is
• Hagfish
concerned with phylogenesis, it is a study of
(craniates
history and of animals that no longer inhabit
without
the earth and are known to us only by a
vertebrae)
fossil record.
• Vertebrates
• It is interested in the survival value of
(craniates
structure (an adaptation), of the struggle for
with
compatibility with an ever-changing
vertebrae)
environment, of the invasion of new
• Chordates are animals that have a notochord
territory by those most effectively equipped
in the embryo stage at least. Craniates are
for survival, and of the extinction of species.
chordates with a neurocranium (braincase).
• The history of vertebrates, including
• Vertebrates are chordates with vertebrae.
humans, is a fascinating story from which is
Vertebrae appear during embryonic
developing a genealogy based on the data
development after the notochord has
just described. Comparative anatomy
formed. Subsequently, they reinforce the
addresses curiosity about the origin of
notochord or replace it functionally.
species, including our own. The
generalizations and conclusions arrived at in
Chordate Phylogeny
the discipline add to the enlightenment of
the human mind.
• Chordates have a fluid-filled internal body
cavity termed a coelom.
THE PHYLUM CHORDATA: THE BIG FOUR
• They are part of a major radiation within the
Bilateria, animals built upon a bilateral,
• It is conventional to think of animals as
symmetrical body plan.
falling into two categories—those lacking
• Within the Bilateria, two apparently distinct
vertebral columns, or invertebrates, and
and independent evolutionary lines are
animals with vertebral columns, or
present. One line is the prostomes, which
vertebrates.
includes molluscs, annelids, arthropods, and
• Such a dichotomy, although valid, does not
many smaller groups.
recognize a group of small marine animals
• The protostome lineage itself divides into
that are transitional between invertebrates
Lophotrochozoa and Ecdysozoa
and vertebrates—the protochordates
• The other bilaterian line is the
• Protochordates have no vertebral column,
deuterostomes, which includes
but they share with vertebrates and with no
echinoderms, hemichordates, and chordates
other animals a combination of four other
• The distinction between protostomes and
morphological features—a notochord, a
deuterostomes was originally recognized on
dorsal hollow central nervous system, a
the basis of certain embryological
postanal tail, and an endostyle (a glandular
characteristics Recently, molecular studies
groove in the floor of the pharynx).
have confirmed and clarified these two lines
• These characteristics are so fundamental in
of evolution within the bilaterian
the architecture of vertebrates that they are
among the first to appear in vertebrate
embryos.
• Indeed, without most of them no vertebrate
could proceed beyond the earliest stages of
Chordate Characteristics • Such mechanical structures, in which the
outer wall encloses a fluid core, are caled
• Most vertebrates have an endoskeleton, a hydrostatic organs.
system of rigid internal elements of bone or • The notochord is a hydrostatic organ with
cartilage beneath the skin. elastic properties that resist axial
• The endoskeleton participates in compression.
locomotion, support, and protection of • It lies along the body axis to alow lateral
delicate organs. flexion but prevents collapse of the body
• Some vertebrates are terrestrial, and most during locomotion
use jaws to feed.
• But cephalochordates and urochordates are
all marine animals, none are terrestrial, and
all lack a bony or cartilaginous skeleton.
• However, their support system may involve
rods of collagenous material.
• Cephalochordates and urochordates are
suspension feeders, having a sticky sheet of
mucus that strains food from streams of
water passing over a filtering apparatus.
• All three taxa, despite these superficial
differences, share a common body design
similar in at least five fundamental features:
nowchord, pharyngeal slits, endostyle or
thyroid gland, dorsal hollow nerve cord, and
postanal tail
Pharyngeal Slits
• These five features diagnose the chordates,
and taken together, distinguish them from
• The pharynx is a part of the digestive tract
all other taxa.
located immediately posterior to the mouth.
• During some point in the lifetime of all
Notochord
chordates, the walls of the pharynx are
pierced, or nearly pierced, by a longitudinal
• The notochord is a slender rod that develops
series of openings, the pharyngeal slits (or
from the mesoderm in all chordates. It lies
pharyngotremy, literally meaning
dorsal to the coelom hut beneath and
“pharyngeal holes”).
parallel to the central nervous system.
• The term gill slits is often used in place of
• The phylum takes the name Chordata from
pharyngeal slits for each of these openings,
this structure.
but a “gill” proper is a specialized derived
• Typically, the notochord is composed of a
structure composed of tiny plates or folds
core of cells and fluid encased in a tough
that harbor capillary beds for respiration in
sheath of fibrous tissue.
water.
• Sometimes the fluid is held within swollen
• In such vertebrates, gills form adjacent to
cells called vacuolated cells; other times it
these pharyngeal slits. The slits are openings
resides between core cells of the notochord.
only, often with no significant role in
• The notochord has the mechanical
respiration.
properties of an elastic rod, so, it can flex
• In many primitive chordates, these openings
laterally from side to side, but cannot
serve primarily in feeding, but in embryos
collapse along its length
they play no respiratory role; therefore gill
slits is a misleading term.
• Pharyngeal slits may appear early in
embryonic development and persist into the
adult stage, or they may he overgrown and
• This mechanical property results from the disappear before the young chordate is born
cooperative action of the outer fibrous or hatched.
sheath and the fluid core it encloses. • Whatever their eventual embryonic or adult
• If the fluid were drained the outer skin woud fate, all chordates show evidence of
collapse and form no useful mechanical pharyngeal slits at some time in their lives.
device. • When slits first evolved, they likely aided in
• The fluid that normally fills the notochord feeding. As openings in the pharynx, they
remains static and does not flow. allowed the one-way flow of a water current
—in at the mouth and out through the
pharyngeal slits.
 • Secondarily, when the walls defining the slits • This is revealed by dissection and is the
became associated with gills, the passing result of the expression of similar DNA
stream of water also participated in molecules inherited during the course of
respiratory exchange with the blood evolution.
circulating through the capillary beds of • Craniates also exhibit similar, but not
these gills. identical, patterns of embryonic
• Water entering the mouth could bring development. This, too, is a result of
suspended food and oxygen to the animal. common ancestry.
As it exited through the slits and across the • Both morphology and developmental
vascularized gills. carbon dioxide was given processes have been altered during the
up to the departing water and carried away passage of time, which, as it lengthens
provides increasing opportunities for genetic
Endostyle or Thyroid Gland changes that result in anatomic diversity.
• Yet, despite these changes, innumerable
• The thyroid gland, like the endostyle, is primitive structural and developmental
involved in iodine metabolism, suggesting a similarities still exist.
homology between the two, with the
endostyle, the phylogenetic predecessor of Regional Differentiation
the thyroid.
• If accepted, then all chordates (and possibly • The typical craniate body consists of three
hemichordates) have endostyles regional componencs—head trunk, and
(urochordates, cephalochordates, larval poscanal tail.
lamprey) or thyroids (adult lamprey, all • Concentrated on or within the head are
other vertebrates). special sense organs for monitoring the
external environment; a brain that is at least
Dorsal and Tubular Nerve Cord large enough to receive and process
essential in coming information and to
• The third chordate characteristic is a dorsal provide appropriate stimuli to the body
hollow nerve cord derived from ectoderm musculature; jaws in some species for
• The central nervous system of all animals is procuring food.
ectodermal in embryonic origin, but only in
chordates does the nerve tube typically form Bilateral Symmetry and Anatomic Planes
by a distinctive embryonic process, namely,
by invagination. • Craniates have three principal body axes;
• Future nerve tube cells of the early chordate – a longitudinal (anteroposterior) axis,
embryo gather dorsally into a thickened – a dorsoventral axis,
neural plate within the surface ectoderm. – a left-right axis (a feature shared
This neural plate of cells folds or rolls up and with many invertebrate groups).
sinks inward from the surface (invaginates) – With reference to the first two,
as a tube to take up residence internally and structures at one end of the axis are
dorsally within the embryo. different from those at the other
• nerve cord produced from a thickened plate end.
by invagination is also called a neurulated
nerve cord. In most rionchordate Metamerism

• It is the serial repetition of structures in a

longitudinal axis
Postanal Tail • Observed in muscles, vertebrae, digestive
• Fourth, chordates possess a postanal tail tract
that represents posterior elongation of the
body extending beyond the anus.
• The tail is primarily an extension of the
chordate locomotor apparatus, the
segmental musculature and notochord.

THE CRANIATE BODY: GENERAL PLAN

• All craniates conform to a generalized

pattern of anatomic structure representing a
collection of primitive (plesiomorphic) and
unique (derived) anatomical features.