Animal Innovations and Early Phyla

Vocabulary flashcards covering animal innovations, embryonic tissues, feeding strategies, early animal phyla, and protostome lineages.

Animals

Multicellular chemoheterotrophs with an extracellular matrix, motile at some life stage, mostly diploid, and closely related to choanoflagellates.

Diploblasts

Organisms that develop from two embryonic tissue layers: ectoderm and endoderm.

Triploblasts

Organisms that develop from three embryonic tissue layers, adding mesoderm to the ectoderm and endoderm.

Deposit feeding

A feeding mode described as "Roomba style" used by certain animals to acquire nutrients.

Porifera (Sponges)

Asymmetric, multicellular filter feeders with choanocytes but lacking true tissues.

Cnidaria (Jellies)

Radially symmetric diploblasts with mesoglea, a gastrovascular cavity (incomplete gut), and stinging cnidocytes.

Cnidocytes

Stinging cells found in Cnidaria (jellies).

Protostomes ("First-Mouth")

Organisms that transitioned to land using waxy cuticles, internal breathing structures, and internal fertilization or shelled eggs.

Platyhelminthes

Flatworms belonging to Lophotrochozoans that are acoelomate and possess an incomplete gut.

Annelida

Segmented worms belonging to Lophotrochozoans characterized by chitinous chaetae.

Mollusca

Lophotrochozoans possessing a muscular foot, visceral mass, mantle secreting calcium carbonate, and a hemocoel; divided into Bivalvia, Gastropoda, and Cephalopoda.