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Morphology and development of the Portuguese man of war, Physalia physalis

View ORCID ProfileCatriona Munro, View ORCID ProfileZer Vue, View ORCID ProfileRichard R. Behringer, View ORCID ProfileCasey W. Dunn
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/645465
Catriona Munro
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
2Collège de France, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology, 75005 Paris, France
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  • For correspondence: catriona.munro@college-de-france.fr
Zer Vue
3Department of Genetics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030 USA
4Graduate Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA
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Richard R. Behringer
3Department of Genetics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030 USA
4Graduate Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA
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Casey W. Dunn
5Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
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Abstract

The Portuguese man of war, Physalia physalis, is a siphonophore that uses a gas-filled float as a sail to catch the wind. It is one of the most conspicuous, but poorly understood members of the pleuston, a community of organisms that occupy a habitat at the sea-air interface. The development, morphology, and colony organization of P. physalis is very different from all other siphonophores. Here, we propose a framework for homologizing the axes with other siphonophores, and also suggest that the tentacle bearing zooids should be called tentacular palpons. We also look at live and fixed larval and non-reproductively mature juvenile specimens, and use optical projection tomography to build on existing knowledge about the morphology and development of this species. Previous descriptions of P. physalis larvae, especially descriptions of budding order, were often framed with the mature colony in mind. However, we use the simpler organization of larvae and the juvenile specimens to inform our understanding of the morphology, budding order, and colony organization in the mature specimen. Finally, we review what is known about the ecology and lifecyle of P. physalis.

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Posted May 27, 2019.
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Morphology and development of the Portuguese man of war, Physalia physalis
Catriona Munro, Zer Vue, Richard R. Behringer, Casey W. Dunn
bioRxiv 645465; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/645465
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Morphology and development of the Portuguese man of war, Physalia physalis
Catriona Munro, Zer Vue, Richard R. Behringer, Casey W. Dunn
bioRxiv 645465; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/645465

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