Animal Asymmetries: Evolution and Mechanisms

Abstract

Asymmetry is a feature of animal body plans, which often reveals its elf only upon closer inspection. While asymmetric coiling of snail shells is obvious even to the untrained eye, sea stars and sea urchins don't even seem to qualify as bilaterians at first glance, and vertebrate asymmetry is restricted to the asymmetric placement of many of the inner organs of the chest and abdomen.