Serotonin-immunoreactivity in the ventral nerve cord of Pycnogonida – support for individually identifiable neurons as ancestral feature of the arthropod nervous system

BACKGROUND: The arthropod ventral nerve cord features a comparably low number of serotonin-immunoreactive neurons, occurring in segmentally repeated arrays. In different crustaceans and hexapods, these neurons have been individually identified and even inter-specifically homologized, based on their soma positions and neurite morphologies. Stereotypic sets of serotonin-immunoreactive neurons are also present in myriapods, whereas in the investigated chelicerates segmental neuron clusters with higher and variable cell numbers have been reported. This led to the suggestion that individually identifiable serotonin-immunoreactive neurons are an apomorphic feature of the Mandibulata. To test the validity of this neurophylogenetic hypothesis, we studied serotonin-immunoreactivity in three species of Pycnogonida (sea spiders). This group of marine arthropods is nowadays most plausibly resolved as sister group to all other extant chelicerates, rendering its investigation crucial for a reliable reconstruction of arthropod nervous system evolution. RESULTS: In all three investigated pycnogonids, the ventral walking leg ganglia contain different types of serotonin-immunoreactive neurons, the somata of which occurring mostly singly or in pairs within the ganglionic cortex. Several of these neurons are readily and consistently identifiable due to their stereotypic soma position and characteristic neurite morphology. They can be clearly homologized across different ganglia and different specimens as well as across the three species. Based on these homologous neurons, we reconstruct for their last common ancestor (presumably the pycnogonid stem species) a minimal repertoire of at least seven identified serotonin-immunoreactive neurons per hemiganglion. Beyond that, each studied species features specific pattern variations, which include also some neurons that were not reliably labeled in all specimens. CONCLUSIONS: Our results unequivocally demonstrate the presence of individually identifiable serotonin-immunoreactive neurons in the pycnogonid ventral nerve cord. Accordingly, the validity of this neuroanatomical feature as apomorphy of Mandibulata is questioned and we suggest it to be ancestral for arthropods instead. The pronounced disparities between the segmental pattern in pycnogonids and the one of studied euchelicerates call for denser sampling within the latter taxon. By contrast, overall similarities between the pycnogonid and myriapod patterns may be indicative of single cell homologies in these two taxa. This notion awaits further substantiation from future studies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0422-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.