...Yuma Fujikake; Kéita Fukuda; Katsuyoshi Matsushita; Yasushi Iwatani; Koichi Fujimoto; Atsuo S. Nishino ABSTRACT The heart of ascidians (marine invertebrate chordates) has a tubular structure, and heartbeats propagate from one end to the other. The direction of pulsation waves intermittently...

... the spinal cord to express undulation patterns accommodated to various inputs into the networks. While these systems have been widely studied in vertebrate swimmers, their evolutionary origin along the chordate phylogeny remains unclear. Ascidians, representing a sister group of vertebrates, give rise...

... identified transcripts for candidate orthologues within the regeneration transcriptome ( Zondag et al., 2016 ) and further confirmed their identities using phylogenetics. For phylogenetic analysis, we included protein sequences from additional ascidians with sequenced genomes, one representing a solidary...

.... and Whitear , M. ( 1958 ). A note on the innervation of the pericardium in Ciona . Pubbl. Stn. Zool. Napoli   30 , 337 - 341 . Burighel , P. , Sorrentino , M. , Zaniolo , G. , Thorndyke , M. and Manni , L. ( 2001 ). The peripheral nervous system of an ascidian, Botryllus...

...Di Jiang; Jason W. Tresser; Takeo Horie; Motoyuki Tsuda; William C. Smith SUMMARY Free-living animals and their larvae utilize light and gravity as cues to navigate in open space. Detection and response to these environmental stimuli are important for the dispersal and settlement of ascidian larvae...

...Claudette Rabinowitz; Baruch Rinkevich SUMMARY In the colonial growth of botryllid ascidians, blastogenesis (bud formation) is a cyclical and synchronized developmental process characterized by a weekly rhythm of budding and apoptotic events. Very little is known about this cycle regulation and its...

...Motoyuki Tsuda; Daisuke Sakurai; Muneki Goda SUMMARY The anterior sensory vesicle of ascidian larvae contains a single large vesicle in which lie two distinct types of pigment cells, anterior and posterior. The ultrastructure of these pigment cells suggests that the anterior pigment cell...

... that swim at Reynolds numbers ( Re ) between 10 0 and 10 2 . We experimentally tested quasi-steady and unsteady blade-element models of the hydrodynamics of undulatory swimming in the larvae of the ascidian Botrylloides sp. by comparing the forces predicted by these models with measured forces generated...

... helically. The present study found no significant asymmetries in the body shape of ascidian larvae ( Distaplia occidentalis ) that could operate to rotate the body during swimming. By recording the three-dimensional movement of free-swimming larvae, it was found that the tail possessed two bends, each...

..., compound ascidians, provides another example of mechanical failure enhancing ecological performance. Compound ascidians compete effectively for space in benthic and epiphytic communities by overgrowing other organisms (e.g. Nandakumar et al., 1993 ). If the organisms overgrown by such an ascidian colony...

...Anna F. Edlund; M. A. R. Koehl ABSTRACT Sessile, soft-bodied, compound ascidians are successful competitors for substrata in crowded benthic and epibiotic marine communities and can be effective colonists of new sites, through adult rafting and reattachment. Adhesion to the substratum is essential...