Successful Biology PhD candidate Allan Carillo-Baltodano and his advisor, Professor Néva Meyer, published a paper in the Journal of Morphology. The paper was written in collaboration with Dr. Mary Rice and Dr. Micheal Boyle of the Smithsonian Institute. A figure from their work was selected for the journal edition’s cover page.

The study examined the development of the nervous system in marine worms. They are unsegmented, and this provides a good opportunity to study the evolution and development of segmentation. Evolutionarily, this species of worms was placed in close relation with a segmented genus. The study shows that this evolutionary relationship warrants further research within this field.

Researchers used confocal imaging to view the nervous system structures within the marine worms. The results from these images concluded that the marine worms did not show signs of morphological segmentation during development.