Concept
Protostomia (ˌproʊtə'stoʊmi.ə) is the clade of animals once thought to be characterized by the formation of the organism's mouth before its anus during embryonic development. This nature has since been discovered to be extremely variable among Protostomia's members, although the reverse is typically true of its sister clade, Deuterostomia. Well known examples of protostomes are arthropods, molluscs, annelids, flatworms and nematodes. They are also called schizocoelomates since schizocoely typically occurs in them. Together with the Deuterostomia and Xenacoelomorpha, these form the clade Bilateria, animals with bilateral symmetry, anteroposterior axis and three germ layers. embryological origins of the mouth and anus In animals at least as complex as earthworms, the first phase in gut development involves the embryo forming a dent on one side (the blastopore) which deepens to become its digestive tube (the archenteron). In the sister-clade, the deuterostomes (second-mouth), the original dent becomes the anus while the gut eventually tunnels through to make another opening, which forms the mouth. The protostomes (from Greek πρωτο- 'first' + στόμα 'mouth') were so named because it was once believed that in all cases the embryological dent formed the mouth while the anus was formed later, at the opening made by the other end of the gut. It is now known that the fate of the blastopore among protostomes is extremely variable; while the evolutionary distinction between deuterostomes and protostomes remains valid, the descriptive accuracy of the name protostome is disputable. Protostome and deuterostome embryos differ in several other ways. Many protostomes (the Spiralia clade) undergo spiral cleavage during cell division instead of radial cleavage. Spiral cleavage happens because the cells' division planes are angled to the polar major axis, instead of being parallel or perpendicular to it.
