Aquatic invertebrates play a pivotal role in (eco) toxicological assessments because they
offer ethical, cost‐effective and repeatable testing options. Additionally, their significance in …

Tunicates are the closest relatives of vertebrates, and their peculiar phylogenetic position
explains the increasing interest toward tunicate immunobiology. They are filter-feeding …

What counts as an individual in the living world? What does it mean for a living thing to
remain the same through time, while constantly changing? These questions are the province …

Botryllus schlosseri, a cosmopolitan colonial ascidian reared in the laboratory for more than
50 years, reproduces both sexually and asexually and is used as a model organism for …

The scopes related to the interplay between stem cells and the immune system are broad
and range from the basic understanding of organism's physiology and ecology to …

In the present study, we carried out a detailed light microscopy investigation of the
cytochemical properties of the haemocytes of the colonial ascidian Botryllus schlosseri …

Two non-indigenous colonial ascidians Botryllus schlosseri (golden star tunicate) and
Botrylloides violaceus (violet tunicate) are becoming increasingly abundant on both the east …

Allorecognition has been well-studied in the context of vertebrate adaptive immunity and
recognition of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which is the central event of …

Tunic cells are free cells distributed in the tunic, the integumentary matrix of tunicates. In
ascidians, various types of tunic cells have been described both in solitary and in colonial …

Ten years ago, we surmised that there was a common evolutionary origin for the immune
and neuroendocrine systems. This was based on morphological and functional results …