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Origin and differentiation of nephridia in the Onychophora provide no support for the Articulata

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Abstract

Comparative morphology currently permits no unambiguous decision on the primary homology of the nephridia of Annelida and Arthropoda. In order to obtain additional information on this subject, ultrastructure of morphogenesis and further differentiation of nephridia was studied in the onychophoran Epiperipatus biolleyi (Peripatidae). In this species, the nephridial anlage develops by reorganization of the lateral portion of the embryonic coelomic wall that initially gives rise to a ciliated canal. All other structural components, including the sacculus, merge after the nephridial anlage has been separated from the remaining mesodermal tissue. The nephridial sacculus does not represent a ‘persisting coelomic cavity’, since it arises de novo during embryogenesis. There is no evidence for ‘nephridioblast‘ cells participating in the nephridiogenesis of Onychophora, which is in contrast to the general mode of nephridial formation in Annelida. Available data on nephridiogenesis in euarthropods (Chelicerata, Myriapoda, Crustacea, and Hexapoda) also provide no evidence for nephridia of Annelida and Arthropoda being a synapomorphy of these taxa. These findings accordingly weaken the traditional Articulata hypothesis.

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Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks are expressed to the staff of the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) in Costa Rica, especially to Alvaro Herrera, for collecting the animals, dissecting, fixing, and sending the material to me. I thank Thomas Bartolomaeus, Gregory Edgecombe, Markus Koch, Hilke Ruhberg and Gerhard Scholtz for giving some critical comments and useful suggestions on the manuscript. Ira Richling kindly helped to get contact to the staff of the INBio. I am thankful to Björn Quast for writing software for a more comfortable handling of the electron microscopic data. This study was supported by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (D/2002 0033) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BA 1520/8-1, 8-2; RU 358/4-1, 4-2).

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    Georg Mayer

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Mayer, G. Origin and differentiation of nephridia in the Onychophora provide no support for the Articulata. Zoomorphology 125, 1–12 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-005-0006-5

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