Mather makes a convincing case for octopus sentience based on a lot of evidence of their complex learning capabilities. It should follow from Mather's findings that these intelligent invertebrates ...are worthy of welfare considerations, just as vertebrate species with similar capabilities are. I provide a complementary environment-behavior analysis of how we might understand the world of the octopus more straightforwardly, borrowing from Mather's examples, to show how to promote opportunities for complex learning and species-typical behaviors in the octopus.
New Irish bat mite records Dool, Serena E.; Orlova, Maria V.; Teeling, Emma C.
Irish naturalists' journal,
06/2018, Letnik:
36, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Hyoliths are Palaeozoic lophophorates Moysiuk, Joseph; Smith, Martin R; Caron, Jean-Bernard
Nature (London),
01/2017, Letnik:
541, Številka:
7637
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Hyoliths are abundant and globally distributed 'shelly' fossils that appear early in the Cambrian period and can be found throughout the 280 million year span of Palaeozoic strata. The ecological and ...evolutionary importance of this group has remained unresolved, largely because of their poorly constrained soft anatomy and idiosyncratic scleritome, which comprises an operculum, a conical shell and, in some taxa, a pair of lateral spines (helens). Since their first description over 175 years ago, hyoliths have most often been regarded as incertae sedis, related to molluscs or assigned to their own phylum. Here we examine over 1,500 specimens of the mid-Cambrian hyolith Haplophrentis from the Burgess Shale and Spence Shale Lagerstätten. We reconstruct Haplophrentis as a semi-sessile, epibenthic suspension feeder that could use its helens to elevate its tubular body above the sea floor. Exceptionally preserved soft tissues include an extendable, gullwing-shaped, tentacle-bearing organ surrounding a central mouth, which we interpret as a lophophore, and a U-shaped digestive tract ending in a dorsolateral anus. Together with opposing bilateral sclerites and a deep ventral visceral cavity, these features indicate an affinity with the lophophorates (brachiopods, phoronids and tommotiids), substantially increasing the morphological disparity of this prominent group.
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