Development of ciliary bands in larvae of the living isocrinid sea lily Metacrinus rotundus

Embryos and larvae of an isocrinid sea lily, Metacrinus rotundus, are described by scanning electron microscopy. Around hatching (35 h after fertilization), the outer surface of the gastrula becomes ubiquitously covered with short cilia. At 40 h, the hatched swimming embryo develops a cilia‐free zone of ectoderm on the ventral side. By 3 days, the very early dipleurula larva develops a cilia‐free zone ventrally, densely ciliated regions laterally, and a sparsely ciliated region dorsally. At this stage, the posterior and anterior ciliary bands first appear: the former runs along a low ridge separating the densely from the sparsely ciliated epidermal regions, while the latter is visible, at first discontinuously, along the boundary between the densely ciliated lateral regions and the cilia‐free ventral zone. In the late dipleurula larva (5 days after fertilization), the anterior and posterior loops of ciliary bands are well defined. The transition from the dipleurula to the semidoliolaria larva occurs at 6 days as the posterior loop becomes rearranged to form incompletely circumferential ciliary bands. The larva becomes competent to settle at this stage. The arrangement of the ciliary bands on the semidoliolaria is maintained during the second week of development, while the larva retains its competence to settle. The larval ciliary patterns described here are compared with those of stalkless crinoids and eleutherozoan echinoderms. The closest morphological similarities are between M. rotundus and the basal eleutherozoan class Asteroidea.     

Early stalked stages in ontogeny of the living isocrinid sea lily Metacrinus rotundus

The early stalked stages of an isocrinid sea lily, Metacrinus rotundus, were examined up to the early pentacrinoid stage. Larvae induced to settle on bivalve shells and cultured in the laboratory developed into late cystideans. Three‐dimensional (3D) images reconstructed from very early to middle cystideans indicated that 15 radial podia composed of five triplets form synchronously from the crescent‐shaped hydrocoel. The orientation of the hydrocoel indicated that the settled postlarvae lean posteriorly. In very early cystideans, the orals, radials, basals and infrabasals, with five plates each in the crown, about five columnals in the stalk, and five terminal stem plates in the attachment disc, had already formed. In mid‐cystideans, an anal plate appeared in the crown. Late cystideans cultured in the field developed into pentacrinoids about 5 months after settlement. These pentacrinoids shared many crown structures with adult sea lilies. On the other hand, many features of the stalk differed from those in adult isocrinids, while sharing many characteristics with the stalk of feather star pentacrinoids, including disc‐like proximal columnals, high and slender median columnals, synarthrial articulations developmentally derived from the symplexial articulations, limited formation of cirri only in the proximal columnal(s), and an attachment disc. On the basis of these findings, phylogenetic relationships among extant crinoid orders are discussed.