Facts and Arguments for Darwin by Fritz Muller
page 50 of 127 (39%)
page 50 of 127 (39%)
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other profound changes, the Zoea passes into the Mysis- or
Schizopod-form (Figure 31). The antennae cease to serve for locomotion, their place is taken by the thoracic feet, furnished with long setae, and by the long abdomen which just before was laboriously dragged along as a useless burden, but now, with its powerful muscles, jerks the animal through the water in a series of lively jumps. The anterior antennae have lost their long setae, and by the side of the last (fourth) joint, endowed with olfactory filaments, there appears a second branch, which is at first of a single joint. The previously multi-articulate outer branch of the posterior antennae has become a simple lamella, the antennal scale of the Prawn; beside this appears the stump-like rudiment of the flagellum, probably as a new formation, the inner branch disappearing entirely. The five new pairs of feet are biramose, the inner branch short and simple, the outer one longer, annulated at the end, furnished with long setae, and kept, as in Mysis, in constant whirling motion. The heart acquires new fissures, and interior muscular trabeculae. During the Mysis-period, the auditory organs in the basal joint of the anterior antennae are formed; the inner branches of the first three pairs of feet are developed into chelae and the two hinder pairs into ambulatory feet; palpi sprout from the mandibles, branchiae on the thorax, and natatory feet on the abdomen. The spine on the labrum becomes reduced in size. In this way the animal gradually approaches the Prawn-form, in which the median eye has become indistinct, the spine of the labrum, and the outer branches of the cheliferous and ambulatory feet have been lost, the mandibular palpi and the abdominal feet have acquired distinct joints and setae, and the branchiae come into action. In another Prawn, the various larval states of which may be easily |
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