What is a Choanoflagellate and what is its evolutionary significance?
What is a Choanoflagellate and what is its evolutionary significance?
Choanoflagellates are collared flagellates having a funnel shaped collar of interconnected microvilli at the base of a flagellum. As the closest living relatives of animals, choanoflagellates serve as a useful model for reconstructions of the last unicellular ancestor of animals.
What do choanoflagellates and animals have in common?
There are striking physical resemblances between choanoflagellates and certain animal cells, specifically the feeding cells of sponges, called choanocytes. These similarities indicate that the unicellular ancestor of animals probably had a flagellum and a collar, and may have been much like a choanoflagellate.
What does the Choanocyte do in a sponge?
Choanocytes are versatile cells. Their flagella beat to create the active pumping of water through the sponge, while the collars of the choanocytes are the primary areas that nutrients are absorbed into the sponge. Furthermore, in some sponges the choanoflagellates develop into gametes.
Are choanoflagellates and sponges sister groups?
Choanoflagellates are among the closest living single-celled relatives of metazoans. This relationship means that choanoflagellates are to metazoans — all animals, from sponges to flatworms to chordates — what chimpanzees are to humans.
Are Choanoflagellates extinct?
Choanoflagellates are not considered threatened or in danger of extinction.
Why are sponges excluded from Eumetazoa?
A sponge consists of many specialized cells that can act and change jobs freely of each other and are not controlled by an overall center so not tissue. The lack of organization means the sponge cannot act on any stimulus as a whole.
Is Eumetazoa tissue true?
Characteristics of eumetazoans include true tissues organized into germ layers, the presence of neurons, and an embryo that goes through a gastrula stage. The name Metazoa has also been used to refer to this group, but more often refers to the Animalia as a whole.
What does Eumetazoa mean?
Eumetazoa is a clade which includes all major animal phyla except sponges, and a few other groups of animals, such as the Placozoa. The Eumetazoa have true tissues, neurons, and an embryo that goes through a gastrula stage.
What are true tissues?
true tissues; synonym: parenchyma) – isodiametric cells joined together in three dimensions, always originating from organized meristematic growth of a single cell that is capable to divide into several, isodiametric planes, thus giving off new cells into several directions
What is the 4 types of tissue?
There are 4 basic types of tissue: connective tissue, epithelial tissue, muscle tissue, and nervous tissue. Connective tissue supports other tissues and binds them together (bone, blood, and lymph tissues). Epithelial tissue provides a covering (skin, the linings of the various passages inside the body)
What is the largest tissue in the human body?
skin
What is the smallest tissue in human body?
cell
What are the six levels of organization from smallest to largest?
The levels, from smallest to largest, are: molecule, cell, tissue, organ, organ system, organism, population, community, ecosystem, biosphere
What are the levels of organization in the human body?
It is convenient to consider the structures of the body in terms of fundamental levels of organization that increase in complexity: subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organisms and biosphere (Figure 1.3)