It spawns for only 1-2 days in spring, which limits the availability of material and restricts experimental studies of its development to the examination of gene expression patterns. In the wild, the planula larva stage may persist for months. millepora cannot currently be kept in the laboratory through a full life cycle. Acropora millepora has been used as a model for coral development, and, like other anthozoans, has polyp, embryo and planula larva stages ( Fig. Scleractinian corals (see Glossary, Box 1) of the genus Acropora are major contributors to the Australian Great Barrier Reef and to other pacific reefs. Model cnidarians: their habitats and life cycles We also discuss the challenges that researchers need to overcome to expand developmental studies using cnidarians. In this Primer, we provide an overview of current model cnidarians and highlight how recent findings using these models have advanced our understanding of bilaterian evolution and development. How this anthozoan asymmetry and the oral-aboral axis of polyps and medusae relate to the two body axes of bilaterians has been a long-standing question that has evoked numerous hypotheses and fuelled recent research. Cnidarians are generally considered to have only two germ layers (endoderm and ectoderm see Glossary, Box 1) and are radially symmetric, although anthozoan polyps display an internal bilaterality in the asymmetric organization of the pharynx, the siphonoglyph (see Glossary, Box 1), and the retractor muscles in the mesenteries (see Glossary, Box 1) (e.g. The main body plan features that distinguish Bilateria from Cnidaria are the bilaterality of the body axes, the presence of a third germ layer (mesoderm see Glossary, Box 1) and a centralized nervous system.
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