Figure 8
Musculature of hatchlings of Meara stichopi . Musculature of two different stages of Meara stichopi juveniles, anterior to the left. A) Ventral view on a juvenile that hatched in the laboratory. The muscle sheath is surrounding the whole body and no mouth opening is formed yet. B) A ventral view on a larger and older juvenile collected from the gut of the sea cucumber with the mouth opening (mo) present. C) Optical cross-section through the animal shown in B). Internal muscle strands (im) extend from the dorsal to the ventral side. D) Longitudinal optical section through juvenile shown in B). The dorso-ventral internal muscle is arranged along the anterior-posterior axis in a serial fashion. Scale bar 10 μm.