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Axial growth gradients across the postprotaspid ontogeny of the Silurian trilobite Aulacopleura koninckii

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Giuseppe Fusco ,
Paul S. Hong  and
Nigel C. Hughes
Giuseppe Fusco
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy. E-mail: Giuseppe.fusco@unipd.it
Paul S. Hong
Affiliation:
Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Daejeon 34132, Korea. E-mail: hongps@kigam.re.kr
Nigel C. Hughes
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, U.S.A. E-mail: nigel.hughes@ucr.edu
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Abstract

Recent morphometric analysis revealed a juvenile (meraspid) axial growth gradient in the trunk of the ~429 Myr old trilobite Aulacopleura koninckii that resulted from growth control based on positional specification, as is common among extant organisms. Here we explore axial growth gradients in the more anterior body region, the cephalon, and in the cephalon and trunk during subsequent development in the holaspid period. We detected an axial growth gradient in the cephalon in the meraspid period, flatter and opposite in direction to that of the trunk, which also persisted during the holaspid period. We also found an holaspid trunk growth gradient, with a different distribution of growth rates among segments than that of the meraspid period. These newly observed growth gradients are compatible with the mechanism of growth control inferred for the meraspid trunk. Thus, the same kind of growth control may have operated in both body regions and during the whole ontogeny of A. koninckii. This study, along with others on the same species that preceded it, show that morphometric analysis of appropriate data sets can address questions of high interest for evolutionary developmental biology using data from fossils. By revealing developmental features at deep nodes of the phylogenetic tree, these studies will elucidate both how developmental processes evolved and how they themselves affected the evolution of organismal body patterning.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 426 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The Paleontological Society. All rights reserved 

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