Advanced Zoology of Chordates

About The Book

One of the most intriguing and fascinating events in evolutionary development science is the creation and evolution of chordates. Chordates are organisms distinguished by the presence of a notochord and pharyngeal gill holes. They are divided into three taxonomic groups: cephalochordates, urochordates (or tunicates), and vertebrates. Chordates, along with echinoderms and hemichordates, form a supraphyletic group of deuterostomes and are assumed to have evolved from deuterostomes' normal predecessors. Vertebrates evolved by generating the most complicated body architecture among metazoans. In the 1980s, a new wave of molecular developmental science discovered that genes encoding interpretation factors and flag pathway molecules play key roles in embryonic cell differentiation, organ and tissue layout, and morphogenesis for metazoan body design. Currently, another wave of evolutionary developmental science studies has revealed that, despite their diverse morphologies, metazoans from cnidarians to vertebrates use a very similar set of interpretation factors and flag pathway molecules for body development: these genes are sometimes referred to as a genetic toolbox.