ASSIGNMENT 2

BOI115

TITLE :
ANIMAL BIODIVERSITY - ARTHROPODA

DATE:
24 JULY 2022

NAME :
NURUL BAITI BINTI ZAINI

MATRIC NUMBER :
157544
Phylum Arthropoda is the largest in the animal kingdom and home to creatures like lobsters,
crabs, spiders, mites, insects, centipedes, and millipedes, among other well-known forms.
Arthropods are by far the most varied life form on Earth. With over 970,000 known species,
insects alone make up more than half of all known life on the planet. Despite the impressive
numbers, these only portray "known species," or those that have been fully explained in
published studies and accepted as genetically distinct.

General Characteristic of Arthropods

Arthropods are invertebrate living organisms that have segmentation, an exoskeleton,

numerous joints, and an open circulatory system. All arthropods have a body supported by a
hardened external skeleton (exoskeleton), which seems to be the contrary of our internal
skeleton.
The exoskeleton is made up of two layers: a non-chitinous, impermeable, thin outer
layer known as the epicuticle and an elastic, permeable, thick inner layer known as the
endocuticle. The endocuticle is primarily made up of chitin and protein. Calcium carbonate
can harden the outer layer of the endocuticle. This trait has been observed in a variety of
marine crustaceans as well as arachnids and insects that sclerotize cuticle proteins.
Because of the great diversity in their structures, arthropods' mouthparts are hardened,
allowing them to consume a wide range of food sources. Furthermore, the exoskeleton lines
the trachea or respiratory tubes of insects and myriapods, and it extends to the gut. This
excellent combination of soft and hard membranes provides rigidity and strength in addition
to flexibility. This exoskeleton must be shed and rebuilt on a regular basis to allow for growth.
An arthropod's body is divided into segments, as are the bodies of some other animal
groups, such as earthworms (phylum Annelida) and velvet worms (phylum Onychophora).
The natural composition of the arthropod gives it significant benefits over vertebrate
endoskeletons, such as greater bending resistance, and since vertebrate solid
endoskeletons are nearly three times weaker than the same area of an exoskeleton. As an
outcome, for the endoskeleton to be as solid as the exoskeleton, it must be thicker, leaving
less space for muscles. Because of its adaptability, the endoskeleton of arthropods is
mechanically efficient; as a result, it forms a varied range of body structures and forms in
arthropods, resulting in a wide variation in the composition of different arthropods.
Arthropods have segmentation, which accounts for the specialization of structures
and [Link] name "arthropod" (which means "jointed feet") originates from the
segmented, typically carries paired jointed appendages on each segment of the body.
Furthermore, segments provide a location for arthropods' multiple limbs or appendages to
develop. Arthropod limbs, such as legs, antennae, and mouthparts, are joined. This is the

1
characteristic that distinguishes the phylum. Internally, the nerve cord runs along the lower
(ventral) side of the body and is not protected by a spinal column. These appendages serve
a variety of functions, including sensation, walking, copulation, and feeding, among others.
These characteristics differ from those found in the phylum Chordata, to which we belong.
The Arthropod circulatory system is a type of closed system circulatory system.
Arthropods have a special body cavity called a haemocoel that contains their hemolymph. In
open circulatory systems, hemolymph replaces blood, lymph, and digestive fluids. In an
open circulatory system, hemolymph is not enclosed by vessels but instead diffuses
throughout the body cavity. The central nervous system is made up of a brain or an
oesophageal center in the front and a nerve cord with ganglions in the back.
Arthropods have a tube-like heart located along the back (dorsal) part of the body
where the blood flows. Arthropod hearts ripple from the back of their bodies to the front
instead of beating rhythmically. This causes their fluid to circulate like a wave from the back
to the front of the body. The dorsal brain of the Arthropoda body cavity is small and primitive.
Long nerve cords run the length of their bodies, beneath the digestive system. From the
central nerves, peripheral nerves branch out into the various body segments of the
arthropod. The overall body arrangement is bilaterally symmetrical, which means that if the
body were cut down the middle from head to tail, the two halves would be mirror images of
each other.
The digestive system of an arthropod can be identified in the body cavity of
Arthropoda. Arthropods can obtain nutrients in a range of ways. Some arthropods eat, while
others are parasites. Arthropods that feed are categorized as either carnivores (meat eaters)
or herbivores (plant eaters). The digestive system of arthropods is divided into three parts:
the foregut, midgut, and hindgut. The foregut is located close to the front of the body and
includes the mouth, gullet, and stomach. The midgut, as the names imply, is located in the
center of the body. The liver and small intestines are located in the midgut. The midgut
contains enzymes that break down food and allow it to be absorbed through the intestines.
The large intestines and the anus are housed in the hindgut, which is located in the back of
the body. The hindgut is in charge of producing waste that will leave the body. In some
cases, the waste product is uric acid (land arthropods), while in others, it is ammonia
(aquatic arthropods).

Classification of Arthropods

Existing forms of the phylum Arthropoda are commonly classified into four subphyla:
Chelicerata, Crustacea , Hexapoda , and Myriapoda.

Chelicerata

2
The Arthropoda suborder Chelicerata includes beings like spiders, scorpions, harvestmen,
mites, and ticks. Like all arthropods, they have segmented limbs and a segmented body, as
well as an exoskeleton made of a thick layer of chitinous skin. Chelicerates have a
cephalothorax and an abdomen as their two body segments. They have six pairs of
appendages but no antennae. The chelicerae, or most anterior appendages, are typically
modified into pincers or fangs. The next pair, the pedipalps, is also frequently altered.
Normally, the four pairs of posterior appendages are used for walking.
The Chelicerata are primarily found in terrestrial environments across the globe, with
the exception of marine horseshoe crabs. In Australia, there are about 8,000 described
species, and there are roughly 80,000 recognised species worldwide.
The ten orders of arachnids include the Scorpiones, Pseudoscorpiones, Araneae ,
Amblypygi, Schizomida, Palpigradi, Opiliones, and three groups of mites and ticks. The
Opilioacariformes, Acariformes and Parasitiformes.

Crustacea
The majority of crustacean species are found in either freshwater or saltwater. Only a few
crustaceans are land animals. Crustaceans, whether marine or terrestrial, have certain
characteristics in common that define their membership in the subphylum Crustacea.
Exceptions to these rules will occur from time to time, as with any large group of organisms.
In general, crustaceans have two pairs of antennae and functional mouthparts,
though one pair may be significantly diminished and difficult to distinguish. The head, thorax,
and abdomen are the possible three divisions of the body, but usually only two are used
(cephalothorax and abdomen). The subdivision Crustacea are such a diverse group that
their development and natural history vary greatly. Similar to other arthropods, crustaceans
also need to moult and shed their exoskeletons, or hardened cuticles, in order to grow. The
egg, from which the immature crustacean emerges, marks the beginning of a crustacean's
life cycle. Crustaceans can grow anamorphically or epimorphically, depending on the taxon.
The hatchling is essentially a miniature version of an adult, with all of the same appendages
and segments. There is no larval stage in these crustaceans.
Anamorphic development takes place when an individual crustacean emerges
without all of the mature adult's segments and appendages. The immature larva gains
segments and appendages as it moults and grows until it reaches adulthood.
Anamorphic crustaceans will have to go through three larval stages in general:
The larva in the naupli stage is essentially a floating head with a single eye and three
pairs of swimming appendages. Some anamorphic crustaceans skip this larval stage and
hatch from the egg with more developed bodies. The larva in the zoae stage has both a
cephalon (head) and a thorax. It will also include abdominal segments by the end of this
stage. Zoae swim with biramous, thoracic appendages and may have compound eyes. By
the megalopae stage, the crustacean has added segments from all three body regions
(cephalon, thorax, and abdomen), as well as appendages such as at least one pair of
swimmerets. It resembles a smaller adult but is sexually immature.

Hexapoda
Since they are invertebrates, insects lack spines. The hexapod body is divided into three
parts: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. An only pair of antennae is present, and
appendages are uniramous. Insects have an exoskeleton as well. The exoskeleton is an
external covering that protects the internal organs of the insect.

3
Most adults have three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings on their thorax. The trachea is
used for gas exchange. Uric acid is the byproduct of nitrogen metabolism and Malpighian
tubules are the excretory organs. The nervous system has a low degree of cephalization.
Insects are dioecious, meaning they reproduce through copulation and internal fertilization.

Figure 1. In this basic anatomy of a hexapod insect, note that insects have a developed
digestive system (yellow), a respiratory system (blue), a circulatory system (red), and a
nervous system (red). Retrieved from [Link] [Link]/wm-biology
2/chapter/subphylums-of-arthropoda/ .

Myriapoda
The Myriapoda, or "many-legged ones," are an order of arthropods that includes close to
13,000 species. Terrestrial myriapods are all the same. Myriapods, like insects and other
uniramian arthropods, have appendages with only one branch, or ramus. Less than ten to
200 pairs of appendages can be present in myriapods, and their sizes can range from
almost microscopic to 30 cm. Most myriapods are found in humid environments, such as
soils, leaf litter, or under stones and wood. Many species have repugnatorial glands, which
are specialized glands that secrete foul-tasting compounds and thus serve as a protective
mechanism.
Myriapods are classified into four groups; how they are related to one another is
unknown. Two of them, the Symphyla and Pauropoda, are made up of tiny arthropods that
live in leaf litter and soil and resemble centipedes on the surface. True centipedes, such as
the one shown at the top left of this page, are classified as Chilopoda. Chilopods have one
pair of legs for each body segment. They are scavengers, and the first pair of appendages
on their trunk have been modified into a pair of claws with poison glands that they use to
snag prey (usually other arthropods). Large centipede bites can cause pain and discomfort
in humans, but there have been no confirmed cases of human fatalities from centipede bites.
Millipedes are Myriapods in the Diplopoda ("double legs"). Early development, two
adjacent embryonic segments fuse to form millipede segments; as a result, each adult
segment of a millipede bears two pairs of legs. Most millipedes, feed on decaying
vegetation, though some are carnivorous.

Myriapod fossils are scarce because most have a thin, light cuticle and live in environments
where fossilization is unlikely. However, enough remains to demonstrate that the group is

4
indeed very old. The oldest fossil uniramians are Cambrian myriapod-like marine organisms.
Some Ordovician fossil burrows have been identified as myriapod burrows; this speculation
is difficult to test, but if correct, myriapods could have been living on land as early as 400
million years ago. The earliest known myriapod fossils are from the Late Silurian, whereas
the oldest known centipedes are from the Devonian-era Gilboa Forest in New York.

Adaptation and evolution of Arthropods

The history of the animals whose descendants would be the first to breathe air and live on
land begins over half a-billion years ago, when the earliest members of a group called
arthropods branched off from their ancestral roots of primitive, bilateral animals. One group,
the trilobites, were the top predators in the sea for more than 325 million years, beginning in
the Cambrian when their primitive legs, complex armored bodies, and the first true eyes in
the animal kingdom gave them immense power over less-endowed prey. Arthropods show a
wide range of adaptations and are present in every habitat on Earth. A few species live in
marine ecosystems, whereas others are found on land and a few have gained the ability to
fly.

Jointed legs
During the two-hundred-and-fifty-million years or so after arthropods first appeared in
the ocean, their basic body plan adapted to an enormous variety of niches in which they
were able to live, creating new species and groups of species. With these coded instructions
carried in every cell and controlled by those mighty Hox genes that choreograph the building
of a bilateral body, the earliest arthropods took the basic ingredients of a segmented body
appendages, tissue, organs, nervous system and brain diverged to become an entirely new
kind of animal. These appendages, in turn, are segmented, which makes them both flexible
and easily altered to become antennae, claws, jaws and other mouth parts, and especially
legs for walking, legs for clinging, legs for holding onto egg sacs, legs for swimming, and
legs for digging.

Skeletons on the Outside

Arthropods were the first bilateral animals with exoskeletons, in their case hard shells
made of a nitrogen-rich sugar called chitin. Inside, an arthropod has all the organs of a
complex higher animal, but its blood just sloshes through loose channels surrounding these
organs, unlike our refined circulatory system that distributes blood throughout our bodies
under pressure. One of the enormous drawbacks to life with a hard shell is that once it forms
and hardens it doesn’t grow, unlike our own internal bones, which are surrounded by flesh
and organs but grow as our bodies grow. Even though arthropods have solved the problem
of growing from juvenile to adult by periodically molting, their hard, heavy shells are one of
the reasons Hollywood nightmare visions of giant insects terrorizing the world could never be
real.

Breathing Underwater
Gills can draw oxygen molecules from the water through a thin membrane because
of a straightforward oxygen concentration gradient between the interior of a respiratory
system and the open water.

5
On to Land
Some of the first signs of animal life on land look like scratches in rocks that had
formed about 400 million years ago during the early Devonian, a time named after the part of
the British Isles where those rocks were first discovered and dated. There are four major
forms of terrestrial arthropods; insects, millipedes and centipedes, spiders, and [Link]
we know that arthropods had diversified before they made landfall and pursued parallel
evolutionary trajectories both in the sea and ashore.

Why arthropods are so successful in both aquatics and terrestrial

environments.

The arthropods' extraordinary adaptability and success is the reason for their incredible
diversity. Arthropods have occupied nearly every niche and habitat on earth thanks to the
evolution of numerous types of appendages, including antennae, claws, wings, and
mouthparts. For hundreds of millions of years, animals lived exclusively in the oceans. Fossil
evidence suggests that an arthropod left the water and walked on land around 400 million
years ago. Arthropods frequently invaded lands. Various groups, including insects,
millipedes and centipedes, spiders, and scorpions, all arrived on land independently at
various times, according to fossil evidence.

When the insects showed up, their bodies solved the problem of breathing air with a tracheal
system that essentially allows them to mainline oxygen directly into their muscles without
passing it through any gill-like or lung-like structures. This kind of internal plumbing makes
insects and other arthropods intensely aerobic, feeding their muscles enormous doses of
oxygen and allowing them to move very quickly. Learning to fly was the tour de force of the
insect branch of the arthropods, perhaps the single most important adaptation that allowed
them to eventually dominate every habitable ecosystem on earth. The small size of insects,
perhaps a drawback in the sea and certainly a problem for most other animals on land, gave
them an advantage when trying to get into the air. Arthropods’ tracheal breathing systems,
evolved during the colonization of dry land, also proved very efficient at oxygenating the
fast-moving muscles necessary for flight.

6
7
References

Barnes, R. D. (2021, September 22). Arthropod. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved

from [Link]

Covich, A. P., Thorp, J. H., & Rogers, D. C. (2010). Introduction to the subphylum
Crustacea. In Ecology and classification of North American freshwater invertebrates
(pp. 695-723). Academic Press.

DeSalle, R. (2021). Subphylum Hexapoda. In Invertebrate Zoology (pp. 407-422).

CRC Press.

Durso, C. (2022, February 25). [Link] | Take Online Courses. Earn College
Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers. [Link]. Retrieved July 19,
2022, from
[Link]
[Link]

Hadley, D. (2018, March 3). Crustaceans, Subphylum Crustacea. ThoughtCo.

Retrieved from
[Link]

Pisani, D. (2009). Arthropods (Arthropoda). The timetree of life, 2009.

Proctor, H. C., Smith, I. M., Cook, D. R., & Smith, B. P. (2015). Subphylum
Chelicerata, Class Arachnida. In Thorp and Covich's Freshwater Invertebrates (pp.
599-660). Academic Press.

Seraphin, D. (n.d.). Phylum Arthropoda | [Link]/ExploringOurFluidEarth.

Exploring Our Fluid Earth. Retrieved from
[Link]
m-arthropoda