Studies on echinoderm oogenesis.―I. Antedon bifida (Pennat)

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The eggs of Echinoderms have provided material for a vast amount of research, much of it classical, not only on problems of hybridisation and artificial parthenogenesis, but also on the physiology of the egg. It is an extraordinary fact, however, that it has not been considered worth while to study the history of the egg during its formation and growth, with a view to arriving at a true estimate of the structures present in the mature egg and in the blastomeres derived therefrom. This statement should he qualified, in that sundry papers were published when modern ontological methods were in their infancy, but since 1906 only one serious attempt has been made to study Echinoderm oogenesis, Wilson (1926) referring all too briefly to the structures present in the eggs of Arbacia. So much important work has been performed on the eggs, in particular of the Echinoidea, that it seemed essential that there should be some account of the origin, history and interrelationships of the bodies present in the cytoplasm of the eggs, further, it seemed interesting to compare the oogenesis of the Pelmatozoa with that of the Eleutherozoa, and hence Antedon bifida and Asterias rubens were selected for comparison. The choice of a Pelmatozoan was strictly limited, hut a wider selection of Eleutherozoa being possible was chosen as being easily obtainable on the shore near Edinburgh at all times of the year, and further, as belonging to the most primitive and least specialised of the sub-orders.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: