a–e, Anatomy of the ctenophore, Pleurobrachia bachei A. Agassiz, 1860. Natural coloration of the major organs in live animal are shown. a, Details of the transparent Pleurobrachia body are shown including, b, the pharynx and tentacle sheaths (pockets). Eight rows of comb plates, called ctenes, are made of giant compound cilia that diffract light – creating iridescence. c, Combs rows in Pleurobrachia are constantly beating. The mouth and the aboral organ (AO) are located at the opposite poles of the animal (a, c). The AO controls complex coordinated behaviors of the animal; d, Ciliated furrows connect the AO and the ctenes to mediate behavior. e, Tentacles have numerous contractile tentillae used to capture food with specialized glue cells or colloblasts (See also of the main text).
f–h, Pleurobrachia neural nets and muscles. f, Comb plate muscles (red) were revealed using in situ hybridization for β-tubulin and subepithelial neural net (green) revealed by tyrosinated α-tubulin immunostaining. g, In this image comb cilia (green) were stained using tyrosinated α-tubulin antibodies (green) where as underlying comb plate muscles were visualized by phalloidin (a muscle marker) that did not stain neurons. h, Organization of the subepithelial neural net around the Mouth as revealed by tyrosinated α-tubulin antibodies (whole mount preparation). Scale: 120 μm (f); 100 μm (g); 200 μm (h). See .