The oculomotor system of Daphnia magna: the eye muscles and their motor neurons

The highly mobile cyclopic compound eye of Daphnia magna is rotated by six muscles arranged as three bilateral pairs. The three muscles on each side of the head share a common origin on the carapace and insert dorsally, laterally and ventrally on the eye. The dorsal and ventral muscles are each composed of two muscle fibers and the lateral muscle is composed of from two to five fibers, with three the most common number. Individual muscle fibers are spindle-shaped mononucleated cells with organized bundles of myofilaments. Lateral eye-muscle fibers are thinner than those of the other muscles but are otherwise similar in ultrastructure. Two motor neurons innervate each dorsal and each ventral muscle and one motor neuron innervates each lateral muscle. The cell bodies of the motor neurons are situated dorsally in the supraesophageal ganglion (SEG) and are ipsilateral to the muscles they innervate. The dendritic fields of the dorsal-muscle motor neurons are ipsilateral to their cell bodies; those of the ventral-muscle motor neurons are bilateral though predominantly contralateral. The central projections of the lateral-muscle motor neurons are unknown. In the dorsal and ventral muscles one motor axon synapses principally with one muscle fiber; in each lateral muscle the single motor axon branches to, and forms synapses with, all the fibers. The neuromuscular junctions, characterized by pre- and postsynaptic densities and clear vesicles, are similar in all the eye muscles.