There are other remarkable and distinctive features of structure which hold the Arthropoda together, and render it impossible to conceive of them as having a polyphyletic origin, that is to say, as having originated separately by two or three distinct lines of descent from lower animals; and, on the contrary, establish the view that they have been developed from a single line of primitive Gnathopods which arose by modification of parapodiate annulate worms not very unlike some of the existing Chaetopods.
The rami may be flattened for swimming, when it is " a bi-ramose swimmeret," or both or only one may be filiform and finely annulate; this is the form often presented by the antennae of Crustacea, and rarely by prae-oral appendages in other Arthropods.
Group of annulate sporangia, magnified.
