The anteroposterior axis in echinoderms and displacement of the mouth in their phylogeny and ontogeny

Abstract

The difference in the position of the anteroposterior axis in larval and adult echinoderms is related to the displacement of the mouth from the anterior end of the body to the posterior end in the phylogeny of echinoderms, which occurred in the course of the reorganization of their body plan from bilateral asymmetrical to radiosymmetrical. Traces of this phylogenetic process have been especially fully preserved in the ontogeny of crinoids. Other recent echinoderms have largely lost such traces. Dislocation of Hox-genes in sea urchins, resulting from the translocation of these genes to the 5' end of the chromosome and inversion of the anterior Hox-genes, is explained by the necessity to preserve the spatial and temporal colinearity in the course of the convergence of the starting and final stages of the mouth displacement process, similar to the elevation process in crinoids, and inclusion in the basic body plan of the structure of a rudiment now regulated directly by the anterior Hox-genes.