A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working EntomologistPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working Entomologist
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
Now by frequent continuous use of such unjointed structures, the cuticle
would tend to become hard, owing to the deposit of a greater amount of
chitin between the folds of the skin, until finally the body being
elongated and homonomously segmented, the movements of walking or
running would be regular and even, and we would have homonomously
jointed legs like those of the trilobites, or of the most generalized
Crustacea and of Myriopoda.
In the most primitive arthropods,—and such we take it were on the whole
the trilobites, rather than the Crustacea,—the limbs were of nearly the
same shape, being long and slender and evenly jointed from and including
the antennæ, to the last pair of limbs of the abdominal region. In these
forms there appear to be, so far as we now know, no differentiation into
mandibles, maxillæ, maxillipedes, and thoracic legs, or into gonopoda.
The same lack of diversity of structure and function of the
head-appendages has survived, with little change, in Limulus. In the
trilobites (Fig. 1) none of the limbs have yet been found to end in
claws or forceps; being in this respect nearly as primitive as in the
worms. Secondary adaptations have arisen in Limulus, the cephalic
appendages being forcipated, adapted as supports to the body and for
pushing it onward through the sand or mud, while the abdominal legs are
broad and flat, adapted for swimming and bearing the broad gill-leaves.
It is thus quite evident that we have three stages in the evolution of
the arthropodan limb; _i.e._ 1, the syllid stage, of simple, jointed,
soft, yielding appendages not used as true supports (Fig. 19); 2, the
trilobite stage, where they are more solid, evenly jointed, but not
ending in claws; and by their comparatively great numbers (as in the
trilobite, Triarthrus) fully supporting the body on the bottom of the
sea. In Limulus they are much fewer in number, thicker, and acting as
firm supports, the cephalic limbs of use in creeping, and ending in
solid claws. 3, The third stage is the long slender swimming
head-appendages of the nauplius stage of Crustacea.
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