A body plan, or bauplan, is essentially the blueprint for the way the body of an organism is laid out. An organism's symmetry, its number of body segments and number of limbs are all aspects of its body plan. One of the key issues of developmental biology is the evolution of body plans as different as those of a starfish, a fern, or a mammal, from a common biological heritage, and in particular how radical changes in body plans have occurred over geological time. The body plan is a key feature of an organism's morphology, and since the discovery of DNA developmental biologists have been able to learn a lot about how genes control the development of structural features through a cascade of processes in which key genes produce morphogens, chemicals that diffuse through the body to produce a gradient that acts as a position indicator for cells, turning on other genes, some of which in turn produce other morphogens. A key discovery was the existence of groups of homeobox genes which are responsible for laying down the basic body plan in organisms. The homeobox genes are remarkably conserved between species as diverse as the fruitfly and man, the basic segmented pattern of the worm or fruitfly being the origin of the segmented spine in man. The field of evolutionary developmental biology, which studies the genetics of morphology in detail is now a rapidly expanding one 1, with many of the developmental genetic cascades, particularly in the fruitfly drosophila, now catalogued in considerable detail . .

Body plan is the basis for phylum, and there are 35 different basic animal body plans, corresponding to different phyla.

Origin

The evolution of body plans became inevitable with the emergence of differentiated multicellular life in the Ediacaran Era, over 600 million years ago. The most basic and successful structure, for free-moving organisms, is the "pipe" or alimentary canal. This is common even to organisms as diverse as humans and earthworms. It is essentially a passage having a mouth at one end, and a cloaca or anus at the other. The simple process of nutrient capture, digestion, and waste disposal is fundamental to the body plan of advanced, free-moving animals. Vertebra, limbs, even brains are supplementary to the pipe. Natural selection has spun off an enormous range of variations on this basic theme, but the pipe model itself remains. The basic symmetry and organization of this body plan apparently gave an ancient organism an enormous advantage at survival and reproduction, and it has been preserved in most animals ever since.

The Cambrian explosion refers to the massive increase in different body plans that took place around 530 million years ago. Fossils from this era show all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes, many quite unlike anything found today. At that time it was possible for organisms to survive and make a living even though they were unrefined and unlikely, because predation had yet to evolve, along with arms races that would optimise and streamline them to occupy a particular ecological niche.