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| Description: |
Commonly called Acorn worms, the enteropneusts are solitary and reproduce sexually. The enteropneust body is divided into three parts: proboscis (protosome), collar (mesosome) and trunk (metasome). Adults display chordate characteristics: pharyngeal gill pores, partially neurulated dorsal cord and a stomochord (similar to chordate notochord.) However, as with all hemichordates, they lack a dorsal postanal tail and segmentation of the muscular and nervous systems. Cameron, C.B., Garey, J.R. and Swalla, B. J. (2000) "Evolution of the chordate body plan: New insights from phylogenetic analyses of deuterostome phyla." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 97: 4469-4474. (Online) |
| Gene Links: | Enteropneusta in GenBank |