Embryonic and postembryonic morphogenesis of a grasshopper interneuron.

The object of this study was to describe the embryonic and postembryonic morphogenesis of a grasshopper interneuron in order to determine how, and when, this cell comes to assume its mature form. DCMD is an intensively investigated interneuron whose morphology, input and output physiology, and role in behavior are relatively well-known in the adult. We examined the morphology of DCMD in the brain at each stage of its development with silver-intensified cobalt-fills. It arises at 40 +/- 4% of embryogenesis and is probably one of the early progeny from its stem cell. In the ensuing 40% of development, its brain arborization grows quite directly into its mature form. Branches appear first and are always longest and densest in the brain region where the adult arborization is found. Thus, the adult form arises by initially directed growth and not by secondary selection of branches from a diffuse or overgrown arborization. Restricted secondary branch loss of lateral filopodia and probably of a few early branches does occur. Embryonic and postembryonic development of the cell are distinctly different. Embryogenesis is the period of morphological differentiation as indicated by the growth and shaping of the brain and also thoracic (axonal) arborizations, the appearance of cytological specializations, and the logarithmic growth of the neurite and soma. The brain arborization has its mature form, although not size, by the completion of embryogenesis. Postembryonic development is a period of substantial, but primarily allometric, growth. The soma and neurite grow linearly (with time), and the arborization grows in proportion to brain size.