Meeting Abstract
Jaws have evolved numerous times in the animal kingdom and display a wide variety of structural, compositional, and functional differences that reflect their polyphyletic origins. Among soft-bodied invertebrates, aka worms, jaws are known from annelids, chaetognaths, flatworms, gnathostomulids, micrognathozoans, mollusks, rotifers and several ecdysozoans. Some animals use their jaws only to capture prey (e.g., chaetognaths, flatworms), while others have jaws that function only in prey processing (e.g., gnathostomulids, onychophorans), and yet some animals can both capture and masticate prey using their jaws (e.g., rotifers). Though structural diversity among invertebrate jaws is becoming better characterized with the use of high-resolution light and electron microscopy, many details still remain poorly described such as elemental composition and neuromuscular control, and this absence of data has impeded a greater understanding of their functional diversity and evolutionary origins. With this symposium, we aim to bring together researchers of disparate jawed taxa to draw structural and mechanistic comparisons among species to determine commonalities in invertebrate jaws. Additionally, we show that rotifer jaws, which are perhaps the best-characterized jaws among invertebrates, are still a mystery with regards to their origins and mechanics. Nevertheless, novel technologies such as energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and 3D CAD software and printing are being used to characterize the inorganic matrices of rotifer jaws and develop physical models of their mechanical properties, respectively. We predict that these methods can also be used to develop biomimetic and bioinspired constructs based on the full range of jaw complexity (structural and compositional), and that such constructs can also be developed from other invertebrate taxa.
