Arthropod Head Debate

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The great debate over how the head segments of existing arthropods are aligned was largely dispelled in the late 1990s when the expression domains of Hox genes were first applied to the study of Arthropod evolution. The traditional concept that chelicerates had lost a deuto cerebral segment and that the chelicerae was innervated by the tritocerebrum was overturned when the anterior expression domain of labial, the anteriormost gene of the arthropod Hox cluster, was found to align the chelicerae with the first antenna of mandibulates (Edgecombe and Legg 2014). This alignment of the head was later confirmed by resemblances in the developing nervous systems of Limulus and crustaceans and is now widely supported by scientists. Another study that …show more content…

Even greater controversy surrounds the segmental alignment of head structures in many fossil arthropods and those of extant taxa, a exhibition of the so-called arthropod head problem. Much of the debate involves the interpretations of structures in Cambrian fossils variably described as frontal appendages or great appendages. Whether predatory appendages in such taxa as anomalocaridids and megacheirans belong to the same head segment and with which neuromere of the brain they are associated is the heart of the problem(Edgecombe and Legg 2014). More recent studies consider these appendages to either be or not be segmentally …show more content…

The traditional basis for identifying the segmental association of modified appendages in fossil arthropods has been to use structural correspondence in appendage morphology (e.g. the elbow joint and chelate tip of megacheiran great appendages suggest homology with chelicerae) and to integrate their relationships to other appendages (i.e. an apparent association of megacheiran great appendages and antennae in some taxa suggests the former are trito cerebral/postcheliceral if the antennae are deuto cerebral as in extant arthropods) (Edgecombe and Legg

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