animal development, animal development: animal embryos [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]animal development: animal embryosEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.the processes that lead eventually to the formation of a new animal starting from cells derived from one or more parent individuals. Development thus occurs following the process by which a new generation of organisms is produced by the parent generation.

General features

Reproduction and development

In multicellular animals (Metazoa), reproduction takes one of two essentially different forms: sexual and asexual. In asexual reproduction the new individual is derived from a blastema, a group of cells from the parent body, sometimes, as in Hydra and other coelenterates, in the form of a “bud” on the body surface. In sponges and bryozoans, the cell groups from which new individuals develop are formed internally and may be surrounded by protective shells; these bodies, which may serve as resistant forms capable of withstanding unfavourable environmental conditions, are released after the death of the parent. In certain animals the parent may split in half, as in some worms, in which an individual worm breaks into two fairly equal parts (except that the anterior half receives the mouth, “brain,” and sense organs if they are present).

Obviously, in such a case it is impossible to say which of the two resulting individuals is the parent and which the offspring. Some brittle stars (starfish relatives) may reproduce by breaking across the middle of the body disk, with each of the halves subsequently growing its missing half and the corresponding arms.

A common feature of all forms of asexual reproduction is that the cells—always a substantial number of cells, never only one cell—taking part in the formation of the new individual are not essentially different from other body, or somatic, cells. The number of chromosomes (bodies carrying the hereditary material) in the cells participating in the formation of a blastema is the same as in the other somatic cells of the parent, constituting a normal, double, or diploid (2n), set.

In sexual reproduction, a new individual is produced not by somatic cells of the parent but by sex cells, or gametes, which differ essentially from somatic cells in having undergone meiosis, a process in which the number of chromosomes is reduced to one-half of the diploid (2n) number found in somatic cells; cells containing one set of chromosomes are said to be haploid (n). The resulting sex cells thus receive only half the number of chromosomes present in the somatic cell. Furthermore, the sex cells are generally capable of developing into a new individual only after two have united in a process called fertilization.

Each type of reproduction—asexual and sexual—has advantages for the species. Asexual reproduction is, at least in some cases, the faster process, leading most rapidly to the development of large numbers of individuals. Males and females are independently capable of producing offspring. The large size of the original mass of living matter and its high degree of organization—the new individual inherits parts of the body of the parent: a part of the alimentary canal, for instance—make subsequent development more simple, and the attainment of a stage capable of self-support easier. New individuals produced by asexual reproduction have the same genetic constitution (genotype) as their parent and constitute what is called a clone. Though asexual reproduction is advantageous in that, if the parent animal is well adapted to its environment and the latter is stable, then all offspring will benefit, it is disadvantageous in that the fixed genotype not only makes any change in offspring impossible, should the environment change, but also prevents the acquisition of new characteristics, as part of an evolutionary process. Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, provides possibilities for variation among offspring and thus assists evolution by allowing new pairs of genes to combine in offspring. Since all body cells are derived from the fertilized egg cell, a mutation, or change, occurring in the sex cells of the parents immediately provides a new genotype in each cell of the offspring. In the course of evolution, sexual reproduction has been selected for, and established in, all main lines of organisms; asexual reproduction is found only in special cases and restricted groups of organisms.

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