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Species / Invertebrates / European lancelet
European lancelet
Branchiostoma lanceolatum
Invertebrates
Species Overview
Branchiostoma lanceolatum is the type species of the genus Branchiostoma and one of the earliest described cephalochordates, historically known as "amphioxus." It is found in temperate coastal waters of the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea, typically inhabiting coarse sandy substrates at depths of a few meters. Adults reach about 5–8 cm in length and possess the characteristic lancelet body plan: an elongated, laterally compressed form with a persistent notochord, segmented myomeres, pharyngeal gill slits, and a dorsal nerve cord. They are filter feeders, using cilia to generate water currents through the pharynx and capturing food particles in mucus. B. lanceolatum has historically been the most studied lancelet species in European laboratories and was central to early evolutionary theories about vertebrate origins proposed by scientists such as Kowalevsky in the 19th century. It spawns in spring and summer, releasing eggs and sperm into the water column for external fertilization. Embryonic development is well characterized and involves deuterostome-type radial cleavage. Its genome has been sequenced, confirming the conserved, pre-duplication state of the chordate genome. The species remains a cornerstone model in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo).
Integrated UMAP Atlas & Gene Explorer
Provisional atlas release
This view is a provisional release built from a public dataset (PMID 38811547) that has not yet completed the LACA annotation pipeline: cell groups are unsupervised Leiden clusters without curated cell-type names, and the embedding was recomputed by LACA (normalize/HVG/PCA/UMAP) without batch correction. Gene search is disabled pending the curated release.
27,073 cells · provisional clusters Loading UMAP for European lancelet…
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