Echinoderms

23.10.24

(Greek, echino = spiny; derma = skin)

7,300 species 15,000 fossil species

- All echinoderms are marine (none in fresh water or on land) in both

shallow and deep water. ( some brackish)
- Size range from a few millimeters to a meter (generally decimeters).
- Adult are mostly benthic (bottom-dwellers) with few exceptions,
while larvae are pelagic.
- Extensive fossil record. Most Paleozoic echinoderms were sessile,
while most living echinoderms can creep from place to place. Some
can swim or float.
- Diversified into a number of life styles: predators, detritus feeders,
filterfeeders, scrape algae from rocks.
- Ecological importance, adult morphology, unusual biomechanical
properties, and embryos

Echinoderms are deuterostomes

- Deuterostoma
o Bilateral symmetry
o Complete gut
o Coelomates – body
cavity
o Gill slits
o Post anal appendage
- Echinodermata
o Secondary
pentaradiate
symmetry
o Yes, complete gut
o Yes, coelomate
o Lack of gill slits (some fossils)
o Lack of post-anal appendage
- Modern echinoderms (mineralized skeleton) present in the early
Cambrian (543-490 Mya)

Molecular data strongly support deuterostome clade

Systematics

- Competing hypothesis of the

phylogenetic relationship of extant
echinoderms

- Different hypothesis
within the eleutherozoa

- Phylogenomic studies
support the asterozoa
clade

Echinoderm Fossil Record

- Varied greatly

Evolution of symmetry in echinoderms

- Pentaradial symmetry evolved form

triradiate (Helicoplacoids) and bilateral (cinctans, solutes) forms
- Genes show echinoderms lost the posterior part of their genes (all
head)

The Echinoderm Bauplan – common features

Calcitic skeleton composed of many ossicles

- Only animal with an endoskeleton mineralised

differently, not an exoskeleton as its covered by
epidermis
o Endoskeleton arising from mesodermal
tissues and covered by epidermis
- Stereom like a single calcite crystal (CaCO3 +
5% of MgCO3).
- The pores are populated by dermal cells and
fibres (stroma)
- 0.1% organic matrix protein
- Birefringent optical properties
- Embedded in soft tissues or fused together
Excellent fossil record

- During geological past, entire

rock formations made of
echinoderm fossils
o Carboniferous
o Jurassic

Pentaradial body organisation in adults

- Directional movement!
- Central disc and five set of body parts.
- Five-fold organization of skeleton and most organ
systems
- Unique motility despite the radial symmetry.
- Body orientation: Madreporite (opening of water
vascular
- system) and radii

Madreporite

- A is the radii opposite the

Madreporite

Water vascular system

- Functions
o locomotion, respiration, feeding,
sensory perception
- Fluid-filled canals branching from a ring
canal.
- The canals lead to podia (tube feet) arranged along branches
(ambulacra).
- Tube feet are sucker-like appendages.
- Tube feet are extended and retracted by hydraulic pressure.
- Embryological origin from coelom (left mesocoel).
- Fluid similar to sea water and cells (coelomocytes) circulated by cilia

A starfish is a squashed
sea urchin, a sea urchin is
a round starfish

Sea urchin water vascular

system
 - Ceolomecytes
o Fluid circulated by cilia

Hemal and excretory system

- Use skin for gas exchange, dermal gills

- Derived from coelom.
- Fluid moved by cilia and muscle pumping.
- Oral and aboral ring connected by axial sinus.
- Axial gland which produces some coelomocytes.
- Extend to the gonads.
- Gas exchange occurs in the dermal gills or papullae.
- Excretion and ions exchange through podia and papullae

Nervous system

- Central (CNS) and peripheral (PNS) nervous system

o However lack of cephalization (clear head)
- Radial nerve cords (RN) run under each of the ambulacra (cell
bodies of motor neurons and interneurons).
- A nerve ring (NR) connects the radial nerves. Lack any trace of
cephalization.
- In the past, people thought it wasn’t a real nervous system, that’s
not true
o Similar to nerve cord, and as complex as our spine cord
Sensory organs

- No clear eye, excluding sea stars, true eye at the end of the arm
- Sensory neurons respond to touch, chemicals, light and water
current.
- Located primarily within the ectoderm of podia and send axons to
the radial nerves. Mostly a nerve-net.
- No centralized sensory organ
- Diffuse light sensing
o Have photoreceptors on the skin?
- Skeleton important part of the visual system
o Birefringent properties act as lenses!
- Diffuse all sensory organs throughout their body, rather than
organs

Pedicellariae

- First thought to be a parasite

- Pincer-like structure produced by the skeleton
- Responds to stimuli independently of main nervous
system
o Not connected to main nervous system, clamp
independently if removed
- Known as suicidal structures, used to protect or
camouflage
- Neuromuscular reflex
- Defense, predation, hold object for camouflage

Reproduction and life cycle

- Separate sexes.
- External fertilization.
 - Synchronize the reproductive activities.
- Indirect development.
- Bilaterally symmetric ciliated larva (pluteus, dipleura etc.)

Sea urchin development

- Larvae bilateral
- Metamorphosis, go inside
out

Orientation to the substrate and

disposition of ambulacrial surface differs
in the five classes: 5 body forms

- Sea stars (asteroidea), both facing

down
- Sea urchins (echinoidea) opposite
- Sea Lillies

Crinoids

- Sea lilies and featherstars

- Most abundant and important of fossils of
Paleozoic and Mesozoic.
- 5000 fossil species.
- 85% of extant crinoids (540 species) are
unstalked feather stars.
- Went through bottle neck, rediversification in
extant species
- Stalked crinoids, most ancient, less abundant
now
- Now, has a reduced stalk, often still found in
larvae, but reabsorbed during
metamorphosis
- All crinoids are passive suspension feeders.
o Eat anything and everything, different
from filter feeding
 - Cuplike body bearing five usually branched and commonly
featherlike arms.
- Stalk made of discoidal skeletal pieces columnal.
- Central canal containing coelomic and neural tissue.
- Small side branch (pinnule) on alternating sides of successive
ossicles along the arms.
- Comatulida have hook-like cirri.
- Comatulidae is the most common and the only shallow water
- Direct development
- Gonads are attached to the arms
- Pinnule for gas exchange

The classes 

- All extant crinoids are direct deveolpers,

fat larva that goes straight into
metamorphosis

Asteroidea – sea stars: 1600 extant species

- Central disc and multiple (typically 5) radiating

arms
- No sharp demarcation between arms and
central body
- Extension of a large coelomic cavity from the
central disc into the arms (the gonads and
pyloric caeca)
- Move using tube feet
- Most are predators. Feed
on sessile or slow-
moving prey (e.g.
molluscs, corals)
- Many are able to extrude
their stomachs out and
digest food outside the
body

Ophiuroids- Brittle stars and basket stars: 1600 species, 500 mya
(Ordovician).

- Molecular and phylogeny data didn’t match

- Rapidly fall to pieces after death, rarely preserved whole
 - Five long, flexible arms and a central, armored disk-shaped body up
to 60cm
- Basket stars arms are very highly forked and branched
- Dominant in many parts of the deep sea, often found on exhibitions
- Scavengers and detritus feeders, prey on small live animals such as
small crustaceans and worms, filter-feed on plankton with their arms
(basket stars)
- Some can be vicious predators as they are much faster than sea
stars
- Body form
o The disk contains all of the viscera.
o Calcite ossicles are fused to form
armor plates, tests.
o Gas exchange and excretion occur
through cilia-lined sacs called bursae.
o Move rapidly by wriggling their arms.
o The arms are supported by an internal
skeleton plates that look like vertebrae
(vertebral ossicles).
o These are moved by a system of
muscles and linked together by ball
and-socket joints

Echinoids - Sea urchins, pencil urchins Sand dollars, Heart urchins 940
species

- •Appear in the Ordovician (~450 Mya). •Shapes

range from nearly globular to highly flattened.
- 2 clades, regular (younger) and irregular
- Body plan
o Regular echinoids, with nearly perfect
pentameral (five-fold) symmetry; and
irregular echinoids with altered symmetry (secondary
bilateral).
o Skeleton is almost always made up of tightly interlocking
plates that form a rigid structure or test.
o Are covered with movable spines.
o Five conspicuous gonads arrayed interambulacrally.- uni
(edible)
 o Mainly herbivores, but can graze on anything: plant, animal,
rock.
o Parallel to the intestine is the siphon.
o Only soft part of skeleton is the peristomial membrane.
o Unique jaw apparatus known as Aristotle's Lantern that can
protrude from the mouth.
- The Aristotles lantern – composed of:
o Five pyramids in the interamnulacral space
o Each pyramid is formed of two hemi-pyramids which support
an elongate tooth.
o Five teeth constantly growing.
o A number of smaller structures
(Epiphysis) and muscle
o Can chew food (herbivores) even rocks!
o Inspired mars rover grabber

Irregular echinoids

- Includes sand dollars and sea

potatoes
- Secondary plane or bilateral
symmetry
- Anus has migrated in evolution such
that
- anterior posterior
- axis is oriented parallel to the ground

Holothuroids Sea cucumber

1400 species

- The oldest sea cucumber spicules are from the Ordovician (~460
million years ago).
- Nearly every marine environment.
- Generally long and wormlike.
- Five rows of tube feet running from the mouth along the body.
- Skeletal plates are reduced to microscopic spicules (soft bodied).
- Several species can swim.
 - Pharmaceutical and food industry.
- Body plan
o Calcareous ring that encircles the
pharynx or throat.
o This ring serves as an attachment
point for muscles.
o Circlet of oral tentacles.
o Madrepore opens into the coelom.
o Respiratory trees used in gas
exchange are attached to the rectal area.

Regeneration

- Complete regeneration of missing body parts.

- Regenerate missing limbs, arms, spines - even intestines.
- Some brittle stars and sea stars can reproduce asexually by
breaking a ray or arm or by deliberately splitting the body in half.
- Each piece then becomes a whole new animal.
- Even the larva has regenerative properties and can reproduce
asexually
- Brittle stars and starfish can easily brake their arms to escape
predation (autotomy).
- Sea urchin regenerate skeleton and pedicellariae (Suicide
structures).
- Sea cucumbers when attacked they eviscerate the so called
Cuverian threads which are toxic (holothurin).
- Defense and increase survival at both adult and larval stage.
- Regenerate: intestine, skeleton, nervous system, gonads …..
- Generation of a wound, attraction of coelomocytes, proliferation,
patterning of the new structure.

Immune system in sea urchin