Planarians are members of the Platyhelminthes (flatworms). These animals have evolved a
remarkable stem cell system. A single pluripotent adult stem cell type (“neoblast”) gives rise …

Nervous systems are traditionally thought of as providing sensing and behavioral
coordination functions at the level of the whole organism. What is the evolutionary origin of …

Planarians have a long history in the fields of developmental and regenerative biology.
These animals have also sparked interest in neuroscience due to their neuroanatomy …

Background Germline determination is believed to occur by either preformation or
epigenesis. Animals that undergo germ cell specification by preformation have a continuous …

Planarians represent the most primitive bilateral triploblastic animals. Most planarian
species exhibit mechanisms for whole-body regeneration, exemplified by the regeneration …

The ability to respond to light has profoundly shaped life. Animals with eyes overwhelmingly
rely on their visual circuits for mediating light-induced coordinated movements. Building on …

ABSTRACT Invertebrate Zoology: A Tree of Life Approach is a comprehensive and
authoritative textbook adopting an explicitly phylogenetic organization. Most of the classical …

Investigating development in a wide variety of organisms allows researchers to take
advantage of both diverse and conserved evolutionary solutions that animals have made to …

Planarians, a class of flatworm, are extraordinary: they possess the remarkable ability to
regenerate lost body parts, including complete regeneration of the nervous system. If cut into …

Abstract Freshwater planaria (Platyhelminthes, Turbellaria, Tricladida) pose a challenge to
current concepts of biological individuality. We review molecular and developmental …