Limulus Sentence Examples

The various comparisons previously made between the structure of Limulus and the Eurypterines on the one hand, and that of a typical Arachnid, such as Scorpio, on the other, had been vitiated by erroneous notions as to the origin of the nerves supplying the anterior appendages of Limulus (which were finally removed by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in his beautiful memoir (6) on the structure of that animal), and secondly by the erroneous identification of the double sternal plates of Limulus, called " chilaria," by Owen, with a pair of appendages (7).

It is not desirable to occupy the limited space of this article by a full description of the limbs and segments of Limulus and Scorpio.

On the surface of the carapace there are in both animals a pair of central eyes with simple lens and a pair of lateral eyetracts, which in Limulus consist of closely-aggregated simple eyes, forming a " compound" eye, whilst in Scorpio they present several AC separate small eyes.

The tergites of this region and those of the following region, the metasoma, are fused to form a second or posterior carapace in Limulus, whilst remaining free in Scorpio.

This is represented in Limulus by the first gillbearing appendage.

The next four pairs of appendages (completing the mesosomatic series of six) consist, in both Scorpio and Limulus, of a base carrying each 130 to 150 blood-holding, leaf-like plates, lying on one another like the leaves of a book.

The difference between the gill-books of Limulus and the lung-books of Scorpio depends on the fact that the latter are adapted to aerial respiration, while the former serve for aquatic respiration.

The appendage carrying the gill-book stands out on the surface of the body in Limulus, and has other portions developed besides the gill-book and its base; it is fused with its fellow of the opposite side On the other hand, in Scorpio, the gill-book-bearing apFIG.

There is no doubt that these are parapodial or limb appendages, carrying numerous imbricated secondary processes, and therefore comparable in essential structure to the leaf-bearing plates of the second meso somatic somite of Limulus.

In Limulus the metasoma is practically suppressed.

It is probable that we have in the metasoma of Limulus a case of the disappearance of once clearly demarcated somites.

Perhaps the most important general agreement of Scorpio compared with Limulus and the Eurypterines is the division of the body into the three regions (or tagmata) - prosoma, mesosoma and metasoma - each consisting of six segments, the prosoma having leg-like appendages, the mesosoma having foliaceous appendages, and the metasoma being destitute of appendages.

In 1893, some years after the identification of the somites of Limulus with those of Scorpio, thus indicated, had been published, zoologists were startled by the discovery by a Japanese zoologist, Kishinouye (8), of a seventh prosomatic somite in the embryo of Limulus longispina.

The simple identification of somite with somite in Limulus and Scorpio seemed to be threatened by this discovery.

As in Limulus, so in Scorpio, this unexpected somite and its appendages disappear in the course of development.

Owing to its position it is convenient to term the somite which is excalated in Limulus and Scorpio " the praegenital somite."

This has not been demonstrated by an actual following out of the development, but the position of these pieces and the fact that they are (in Limulus) supplied by an independent segmental nerve, favours the view that they may comprise the sternal area of the vanished praegenital somite.

The first segment of the mesosoma of Scorpio and Limulus thus remains the first segment, and can be identified as such throughout the Eu-arachnida, carrying as it always does the genital apertures.

There are a number of other important points of structure besides those referring to the somites and appendages in which Limulus agrees with Scorpio or other Arachnida and differs from other Arthro- '11'1 poda.

The position of the chelicerae of Limulus and of the ganglionic nerve-masses from which they receive their nerve-supply, is closely similar to that of the same structures in Scorpio.

The cerebral mass is in Limulus more easily separated by dissection as a median lobe distinct from the laterally placed ganglia of the cheliceral somite than is the case in Scorpio, but the relations are practically the same in the two forms. Formerly it was supposed that in Limulus both the chelicerae and the next following pair of appendages were prosthomerous, as in Crustacea, but the dissections of Alphonse Milne-Edwards (6) demonstrated VI FIG.

Limulus thus agrees with Scorpio and differs from the Crustacea, in which there are three prosthomeres - one ocular and two carrying palpiform appendages.

The Crustacea have, in fact, three prosthomeres in the head and the Arachnida only two, and Limulus agrees with the Arachnida in this respect and differs from the Crustacea.

The central nervous systems of Limulus and of Scorpio present closer agreement in structure than can be found when a Crustacean is compared with either.

The lateral eyes are in Limulus " compound eyes," that is to say, consist of many lenses placed close together; beneath each lens is a complex of protoplasmic cells, in which the optic nerve terminates.

The lateral eyes of Scorpio consist of groups of separate small lenses each with its ommatidium, but they do not form a continuous compound eye as in Limulus.

The ommatidium (soft structure beneath the lens-unit of a compound eye) is very simple in both Scorpio and Limulus.

The struc ture of the lateral eye of Limulus was first described by Grenacher, and further and more accurately by Lankester and Bourne (5) and by Watase; that of Scorpio by Lan kester and Bourne, FIG.

Watase has shown, in a very convincing way, how by deepening the pit-like set of cells beneath a simple lens the more complex ommatidia of the compound eyes of Crustacea and Hexapoda may be derived from such a condition as that presented in the lateral eyes of Limulus and Scorpio.

Whilst each unit of the lateral eye of Limulus has arhabdom of ten t pieces See fig.

Numerous rhabdomeres (grouped as rhabdoms in Limulus) are found in the retinal layer of the central eyes also.

Whilst Limulus agrees thus closely with Scorpio in regard to the VII?tg VII, The genital operculum.

A similar pair of coxal glands, lobate instead of ovoid in shape, was described by Lankester in Mygale, and it was also shown by him that the structures in Limulus called " brick-red glands " by Packard have the same structure and position as the coxal glands of Scorpio and Mygale.

In 1900 it was shown that the coxal gland of Limulus is provided with a very delicate thin-walled coiled duct which opens, even in the adult condition, by a minute pore on the coxa of the fifth leg (Patten and Hazen, 13A).

Thus an organ newly discovered in Scorpio was found to have its counterpart in Limulus.

The coxal glands do not establish any special connexion between Limulus and Scorpio, since thay also occur in the same somite in the lower Crustacea, but it is to be noted that the coxal glands of Limulus are in minute structure and probably in function more like those of Arachnids than those of Crustacea.

The scorpion's entosternite gives rise to outgrowths, besides the great posterior flaps, pf, which form the diaphragm, unrepresented in Limulus.

In Limulus small entosternites are found in each somite of the appendage-bearing mesosoma, and we find in Scorpio, in the only somite of the mesosoma which has a welldeveloped pair of appendages, that of the pectens, a small entosternite with ten pairs of muscles inserted into it.

Their movement in an upward or downward direction in Limulus and Mygale must exert a pumping action on the blood contained in the dorsal arteries and the ventral veins respectively.

Muscular fibres connected with the suctorial pharynx are in Limulus inserted into the entosternite, and the activity of the two organs may be correlated.

This body occurs also in the blood of Crustacea and of Molluscs, but its abundance in both Limulus and Scorpio is very marked, and gives to the freshly-shed blood a strong indigo-blue tint.

The great dorsal contractile vessel or " heart " of Limulus is closely similar to that of Scorpio; its ostia or incurrent orifices are FIG.

The arterial system is very completely developed in both Limulus and Scorpio, branching repeatedly until minute arterioles are formed, not to be distinguished from true capillaries; FIG.

A very remarkable feature in Limulus, first described by Owen, is the close accompaniment of the prosomatic nerve centres and nerves by arteries, so close indeed that the great ganglion mass and its out-running nerves are actually sunk in or invested by ch.

Scorpio certainly comes nearer to Limulus in the high development of its arterial system, and the intimate relation of the anterior aorta and its branches to the nerve centres and great nerves, than does any other Arthropod.

An arrangement of great functional importance in regard to the venous system must now be described, which was shown in 1883 by Lankester to be common to Limulus and Scorpio.

This arrangement has not hitherto been detected in any other class than the Arachnida, and if it should ultimately prove to be peculiar to that group, would have considerable weight as a proof of the close genetic affinity of Limulus and Scorpio.

It is not surprising that with so highly developed an arterial system Limulus and Scorpio should have a highly developed mechanism for determining the flow of blood to the respiratory organs.

Those of Limulus were described and figured by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, but he called them merely " transparent ligaments," and did not discover their muscular structure.

They are figured and their importance for the first time recognized in the memoir on the muscular and skeletal systems of Limulus and Scorpio by Lankester, Beck and Bourne (4).

The mouth is relatively smaller in Scorpio than in Limulus - in fact is minute, as it is in all the terrestrial Arachnida which suck the juices of either animals or plants.

The only point in which the gut of Limulus resembles that of Scorpio rather than that of any of the Crustacea, is in possessing more than a single pair of ducts or lateral outgrowths connected with ramified gastric glands or gastric caeca.

Limulus has two pairs of these, Scorpio as many as six pairs.

The most important difference which exists between the structure of Limulus and that of Scorpio is found in the hinder region of the alimentary canal.

Limulus is devoid of any such tubes.

D, Transverse section of a retinula of the lateral eye of Limulus, showing ten retinula cells (ret), each bearing a rhabdomere (rhab).

The same fact is true of Limulus, as was shown by Owen (7) FIG.

Moreover, there is a significant agreement in the character of the spermatozoa of Limulus and Scorpio.

In Limulus Lankester found (15) the spermatozoa to possess active flagelliform " tails," and to resemble very closely those of Scorpio which, as are those of most terrestrial Arthropoda, are actively motile.

In regard to the important structures concerned with the fertilization of the egg, Limulus and Scorpio differ entirely from one another.

C, Transverse section of the The eggs of Limulus are fertilized in the sea after they have been laid.

We have now passed in review the principal structural features in which Limulus agrees with Scorpio and differs from other Arthropoda.

Limulus agrees with the majority of the Crustacea in being destitute of renal excretory caeca or tubes opening into the hinder part of the gut.

It has been considered by them as proving that Limulus, in spite of all its special agreements with Scorpio (which, however, have scarcely been appreciated by the writers in question), really belongs to the Crustacean line of descent, whilst Scorpio, by possessing Malpighian tubes, is declared to be unmistakably tied together with the other Arachnida to the tracheate Arthropods, the Hexapods, Diplopods, and Chilopods, which all possess Malpighian tubes.

The figure B also shows the peculiar neural investiture formed by the cerebral arteries in Limulus and the derivation from this of the arteries to the limbs, III, IV, VI, whereas in Scorpio the latter have a separate origin from the anterior aorta.

When we consider the relationships of the various classes of Arthropoda, having accepted and established the fact of the close genetic affinity of Limulus and Scorpio, we are led to important conclusions.

There is some reason to admit the existence of another more anterior pair of these muscles in Scorpio; this would make the number exactly correspond with the number in Limulus.

Leaving that question for consideration in connexion with the systematic statement of the characters of the various groups of Arachnida which follows on p. 475, it is well now to consider the following question, viz., seeing that Limulus and Scorpio are such highly developed and specialized forms, and that they seem to constitute as it were the first and second steps in the series of recognized Arachnida - what do we know, or what are we led to suppose with regard to the more primitive Arachnida from which the Eurypterines and Limulus and Scorpio have sprung ?

They had lateral eyes' which resemble no known eyes so closely as the lateral eyes of Limulus.

The general form and structure of their prosomatic carapace are in many striking features identical with that of Limulus.

But most important of the evidences presented by the trilobites of affinity with Limulus, and therefore with the Arachnida, is the tendency less marked in some, strongly carried out in others, to form a pygidial or telsonic shield - a fusion of the posterior somites of the body, which is precisely identical in character with the metasomatic carapace of Limulus.

Between the two and at the highest point of the arc, so far as morphological differentiation is concerned, stands the scorpion; near to it in the trilobite's direction (that is, on the ascending side) are Limulus and the Eurypterines - with a long gap, due to obliteration of the record, separating them from the trilobite.

Sense-organs in a similar position were discovered in Limulus by Patten (42) in 1894.

The strange nobody-crabs or Pycnogonids occupy a place on the ascending half of the arc below the Eurypterines and Limulus.

This telson may enlarge, it may possibly even become internally and sternally developed as partially separate somites, and the tergum may remain without trace of somite formation, or, as appears to be the case in Limulus, the telson gives rise to a few well-marked somites (mesosoma and two others) and then enlarges without further trace of segmentation, whilst the chitinous integument which develops in increasing thickness on the terga as growth advances welds together the unsegmented telson and the somites in front of it, which were previ ously marked by separate tergal thickenings.

In living Arachnids, excepting the Pantopoda, it is either fused (with loss of its appendages) with the prosoma (Limulus, 1 Scorpio), after embryonic appearance, or is 1 Pocock suggests that the area marked vii.

The Pantopoda stand in the same relation to Limulus and Scorpio that Cyamus holds to the thoracostracous Crustacea.

An internal skeletal plate, the so-called " entosternite " of fibrocartilaginous tissue, to which many muscles are attached, is placed between the nerve-cords and the alimentary tract in the prosoma of the larger forms (Limulus, Scorpio, Mygale).

In none of them are the appendages known, but in the form of the two carapaces and the presence of free somites they are distinctly intermediate between Limulus and the Trilobitae.

The lateral eyes of Limulus appear to be identical in structure and position with those of certain Trilobitae.

All Arachnida, including Limulus, feed by suctorial action in essentially the same way as Scorpio.

Owen not only occupied himself with the dissection of rare animals, such as the Pearly Nautilus, Lingula, Limulus, Protopterus, Apteryx, &c., and with the description and reconstruction of extinct reptiles, birds and mammals - following the Cuvierian tradition - but gave precision and currency to the morphological doctrines which had taken their rise in the beginning of the century by the introduction of two terms, " homology " and " analogy," which were defined so as to express two different kinds of agreement in animal structures, which, owing to the want of such " counters of thought," had been hitherto continually confused.

Milne Edwards has identified ten species which occur in Australian seas also, and Rein mentions, as belonging to the same category, the helmet-crab or horse-shoe crab (kabuto-gani, Limulus longispina I-Ioeven).

These are the plate-like swimmerets and opercula of Gigantostraca and Limulus among Arachnids and of Isopod Crustaceans.

The compound eye of the king-crab (Limulus) is the only recognized instance of ommatidia in their simplest state.

But they seem to point to a community of origin of Hexapods and Crustacea in regard to the complicated ommatidia of the compound eye, and to a certain isolation of the Arachnida, which are, however, traceable, so far as the eyes are concerned, to a distant common origin with Crustacea and Hexapoda through the very simple compound eyes (monostichous, polymeniscous) of Limulus.

The absence of such renal caeca in Limulus and their presence in the terrestrial Arachnida is precisely on a parallel with their absence in aquatic Crustacea and their presence in the feebly branchiate Amphipoda.

A character of great diagnostic value in the more primitive Arachnida is the tendency of the chitinous investment of the tergal surface of the telson to unite during growth with that of the free somites in front of it, so as to form a pygidial shield or posterior carapace, often comprising as many as fifteen somites (Trilobites, Limulus).

Lateral eyes also are often present which are monostichous with aggregated lenses (Limulus)or with isolated lenses(Scorpio), or are diplostichous with simple lens (Pedipalpi, Araneae, &c.).

You are all familiar with Limulus, the horseshoe crab, a kind of living fossil.

The structure of the prosomatic appendages or legs is also seen to present many significant points of agreement (see figures), but a curious discrepancy existed in the six-jointed structure of the limb in Limulus, which differed from the seven-jointed limb of Scorpio by the defect of one joint.

The tergites, or chitinized dorsal halves of the body rings, are fused to form a " prosomatic carapace," or carapace of the prosoma, in both Limulus and Scorpio (see figs, 7 and 8).

The posterior median process with its repetition of triangular segments closely resembles the same process in Limulus.

It shows in Scorpio and Limulus a tendency to segregate into minor groups or " ommatidia."

Not only are the blood corpuscles of Limulus more like in form and granulation to those of Scorpio than to those of any Crustacean, but the fluid is in both animals strongly impregnated with the blue-coloured respiratory proteid, haemocyanin.

Though the aquatic members of a class of animals are in some instances derived from terrestrial forms, the usual transition is from an aquatic ancestry to more recent land-living forms. There is no doubt, from a consideration of the facts of structure, that the aquatic water-breathing Arachnids, represented in the past by the Eurypterines and to-day by the sole survivor Limulus, have preceded the terrestrial air-breathing forms of that group. Hence we see at once that the better-known Arachnida form a series, leading from Limulus-like aquatic creatures through scorpions, spiders and harvest-men, to the degenerate Acari or mites.

And the important consequences following from the demonstration of the identity in structure of Limulus and Scorpio are evaded by arbitrary and even phantastic invocations of a mysterious transcendental force which brings about " convergence " irrespective of heredity and selection.

When it is admitted - as seems to be reasonable - that the primitive Arachnida would, like the primitive Crustacea, be anomomeristic and anomotagmic, we shall not demand of claimants for the rank of primitive Arachnids agreement with Limulus and Scorpio in respect of the exact number of their somites and the exact grouping of those somites; and when we see how diverse are the modifications of the branches of the appendages both in Arachnida and in other classes of Arthropoda, we shall not over-estimate a difference in the form of this or that appendage exhibited by the claimant as compared with the higher Arachnids.