Leech internal morphology has historically been examined through dissection, serial sectioning, or whole mounts, techniques that are irreversibly destructive to the specimen. Micro-computed tomography (microCT) is a powerful ...

Holopelagic animals were long assumed to have widespread geographic distributions due to the failure to recognize hydrographic species' barriers in the open ocean. As molecular genetic tools are more commonly used to ...

Siphonophores are a diverse group of hydrozoans (Cnidaria) that are found at most depths of the ocean - from the surface, like the familiar Portuguese man of war, to the deep sea. They play important roles in ocean ecosystems, ...

Cnidaria, the sister group to Bilateria, is a highly diverse group of animals in terms of morphology, lifecycles, ecology, and development. How this diversity originated and evolved is not well understood because phylogenetic ...

BACKGROUND: Siphonophores (Hydrozoa) have unparalleled colony-level complexity, precision of colony organization, and functional specialization between zooids (i.e., the units that make up colonies). Previous work has shown ...