Skeleton, tissues, and muscles

The notochord extends virtually the entire length of the body and provides much of its support. It has a firm sheath and a core made up of a single series of cells that contains muscle fibres. These fibres probably maintain the stiffness of the notochord, the main role of which is keeping the body from shortening when the animal swims. The gills, fins, and cirri also contain stiff, supportive rods.

The main body musculature occurs in horizontal chevron-shaped blocks of muscle (myotomes) like those of fishes. This arrangement allows the muscles to pull more effectively in producing a side-to-side movement of the body in swimming. The remaining muscles are quite small and associated largely with feeding and the movement of internal organs.

Nervous system and organs of sensation

The cephalochordate nervous system is simple. The main nerve cord, which is single and hollow as in all chordates, has a slight swelling at the front that barely qualifies as a brain. Nerves from the main nerve cord occur in groups that roughly compare to those of vertebrates in arrangement and in the regions supplied. There are small eyelike organs in the nerve cord that can detect the direction of light and changes in its intensity. Various areas of the body surface, including some near the mouth, detect chemicals in the water and thereby aid in feeding.

Digestion and excretion

Lancelets are suspension feeders that extract small particles suspended in the water. The mouth is covered by an oral hood, the edges of which form the buccal cirri. The cephalochordate commonly is buried in the substrate and positions its mouth above the surface of the sand. During feeding, the cirri form a kind of grid that keeps out large particles. Water is drawn into the mouth by the beating action of cilia on the gills. The pharynx is a large section of the gut just behind the mouth, extending about two-thirds the length of the body, with many narrow gill slits. The water current enters the pharynx, passes through the gill basket to the atrium, and leaves the body through the atriopore. On the floor of the pharynx, between the left and right series of gill slits, an endostyle secretes a sheet of mucus that moves upward along the gills and traps food particles suspended in the water current. The mucus is rolled up and transported to the intestine, where food is digested and absorbed. There is no distinct stomach. The intestine is straight, except for a blind outpouching called the caecum, which has, on the basis of position, been compared to the liver and pancreas of vertebrates. It extends forward along the right side of the pharynx.

Lancelets have unique excretory structures called solenocytes, which occur only in some distantly related animals, such as annelids.

Respiration

The gill is largely a feeding organ, but it also serves for the exchange of gases in respiration. After the water has passed through the gill slits, it reaches the atrium and exits through the atriopore. Excretory products and eggs and sperm also exit the body through this opening.

Circulatory system

The general pattern of blood circulation through vessels and tissues in cephalochordates is strikingly like that of vertebrates, although simpler. The most notable difference is that cephalochordates lack a heart. Blood is forced through the closed system by contractile blood vessels (especially one called the ventral aorta) and by blood vessels of the gills. Blood passes forward from the rear of the body to the ventral aorta, which is located beneath the endostyle, and then branches upward through vessels in the gills. Most of the blood then passes toward the rear of the animal, some of it moving through capillaries in the intestine and taking up food. From the posterior end of the body, blood passes forward and then makes a detour through capillaries in the caecum, much as it does through the liver of lower vertebrates, back to the ventral aorta. There are no corpuscles in the blood.

Hormones

The endostyle takes up iodine and forms thyroxine, an important hormone produced by the vertebrate thyroid gland. This homology is interpreted as a step in the evolution of the thyroid from the endostyle. It is not certain what role thyroxine plays in the physiology of the lancelets themselves, however.