Development of blastomere clones in the Ilyanassa embryo: transformation of the spiralian blastula into the larval body plan

Spiralian embryogenesis is deeply conserved and seems to have been in place in the last common ancestor of the large assemblage of protostome phyla known as the Lophotrochozoa. While the blastula fate maps of several spiralian embryos have been determined, little is known about the events that link the early embryo and the larva. For all cells in the Ilyanassa blastula, we determined the clonal morphology at four time points between the blastula and veliger stages. We found that ectomesoderm comes mostly from 3a and 3b, but also from 2c and 2b. We also observed the ingression and early proliferation of 3a- and 3b-derived ectomesoderm. We found cells in the 2b clone that marked the anterior edge of the blastopore and later the mouth and cells in the 3c/3d clones that marked the posterior edges of these structures. This demonstrates directly that the mouth forms in the same location as the blastopore. In the development of the shell field, we observed dramatic cell migration events that invert the positions of the 2b and 2d clones that contribute to the shell. Using time-lapse imaging, we followed and described the cleavage pattern of the conserved endomesodermal blast cell, 4d, up to 4d + 45 h, when there were 52 cells in the clone. Our results show the growth and movement of clones derived from cells of the spiralian blastula as they transform into the trochophore-like and veliger stages. They have implications for the evolution of the shell in gastropods, the origins of mesoderm in spiralians, and the evolution of mouth formation in metazoans.