The cellular basis for colony form in Podocoryne carnea

Abstract

During the past 10 years considerable data have appeared indicating that the growth of hydroids is not, as was earlier believed, similar to the meristematic growth of plants, but rather that the sites of cell proliferation are removed in space from the sites of utilization, that cells migrate individually, actively as amoebocytes through the epidermis or pawively as epitheliocytes carried along in the hydroplasm, to the sites of utilization, and that considerable migration across the mesoglea occurs.A model of hydroid morphogenesis and morphostasis based on this new information provides a comprehensive picture, albeit one filled in with numerous assumptions, of the manner in which colony form is produced as a consequence of cell proclivities. Copyright © 1974 by the American Society of Zoologists.