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Evolution

Along came a sea spider

An investigation of brain development in sea spiders provides hints about how the earliest arthropod head evolved. These observations are bound to provoke controversy in an already acrimonious field.

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Figure 1: Testing the results of Maxmen et al.2 with Hox gene expression.
Figure 2: Possible evolutionary position of pycnogonids and interpretation of Maxmen and colleagues' results2.

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Budd, G., Telford, M. Along came a sea spider. Nature 437, 1099–1101 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/4371099a

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