Long-term dynamics of placozoan culture: emerging models for population and space biology.

As the simplest free-living animal, (Placozoa) is emerging as a powerful paradigm to decipher molecular and cellular bases of behavior, enabling integrative studies at all levels of biological organization in the context of metazoan evolution and parallel origins of neural organization. However, the progress in this direction also depends on the ability to maintain a long-term culture of placozoans. Here, we report the dynamic of cultures over 11 years of observations from a starting clonal line, including 7 years of culturing under antibiotic (ampicillin) treatment.

Amino acids integrate behaviors in nerveless placozoans.

Placozoans are the simplest known free-living animals without recognized neurons and muscles but a complex behavioral repertoire. However, mechanisms and cellular bases of behavioral coordination are unknown. Here, using as a model, we described 0.