Development of swimming in the medicinal leech,the gradual acquisition of a behavior

Observing the development of behavior provides an assay for the developmental state of an embryo’s nervous system. We have previously described the development of behaviors that were largely confined to one or a few segments. We now extend the work to a kinematic analysis of the development of swimming, a behavior that requires coordination of the entire body. When leech embryos first begin to swim they make little forward progress, but within several days they swim as effectively as adults. This increase in efficacy depends on changes in body shape and on improved intersegmental coordination of the swim central pattern generator. These kinematic details suggest how the swim central pattern generating circuit is assembled during embryogenesis.