Circulatory

1) The circulatory system consists of a blood vascular system and a lymphatic system.
2) The blood vascular system consists of whole blood, heart, arteries, capillaries and veins.
3) Blood consists of plasma and formed elements. The formed elements are erythrocytes, granular
and agranular leukocytes (the latter includes lymphocytes), and thrombocytes (platelets).
4) Hemocytoblasts are precursor of all blood cells. Their initial source is blood islands of the yolk
sac. Eventually they form in liver, kidney, spleen and bone marrow.
5) The lymphatic system consist of lymph, lymphatic capillaries and veins, lymph hearts, lymph
nodes and miscellaneous lymphoid masses in one major taxon or another. Chyle is lymph
collected in intestinal villi. Lymphatics terminate in a systemic vein.
6) Fishes have a single-circuit heart. Venous blood enters sinus venosus, transverses an atrium,
ventricle, and conus arteriosus. The last two are pumps that discharge into a ventral aorta. The
latter carries blood to aortic arches that supply gills, where blood is oxygenated. It then passes via
arteries to capillaries everywhere in the body, gives up oxygen, takes on carbon dioxide, and
returns to the sinus venosus.
7) In craniates that breathe solely by the lungs, a pulmonary circuit carries blood to the lungs and
back and a systemic circuit carries oxygenated blood elsewhere and returns deoxygenated blood
to the heart. This is a double-circuit heart.
8) Double circuit hearts have 2 atria and one or two ventricles. The right atrium receives
deoxygenated blood from the systemic circuit; the left receives oxygenated blood from the
pulmonary circuit
9) Mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in the ventricle of a double-circuit heart is
avoided by one of several adaptations, including spiral valves when there is a single ventricle, and
trabeculae and ventricular septa. A complete interventricular septum separates the blood in
crocodilians, birds and mammals.
10) Right-left shunts of blood (away from the lungs) exist in amniotes to meet metabolic needs
imposed by certain behavioral patterns, including remaining underwater for long intervals
without breathing.
11) A sinus venosus is present in fishes, amphibians, and reptiles. It becomes partially incorporated
into the wall of the right atrium in crocodilians. In birds and mammals, it is not a sinus but a local
collection of cells in the right atrium known as the sinoatrial (SA) node
12) The pulsations of the heart are autogenic, requiring no extrinsic neural stimulus. However, the
rate of beat is imposed by autonomic nervous system (except in hagfishes). The stimulus in
fishes, amphibians, and non-avian reptiles is spread from the musculature of sinus venosus. In
birds, and mammals, it emanates from the SA and an artrioventricular (AV) node.
13) The ventral aorta exhibits a swelling, the bulbus arteriosus, in teleosts and perennibranchiate
urodeles.
14) In most reptiles, the ventral aorta is split longitudinally into two aortic trunks and a pulmonary
trunk. The aortic trunks exit from a cavum venosum in the ventricle and supply all functional
aortic arches except pulmonary. The pulmonary trunk emerges from the right ventricle (cavum
pulmonale) and supplies the pulmonary circuit. The left ventricle has been termed the cavum
arteriosum.
15) The ventral aorta in birds and mammals is split into only two trunks, a systemic trunk that
emerges from the left ventricle and supplies all parts of the body except the lungs, and a
pulmonary trunk that emerges from the right ventricle and supplies the lungs.

16) Six pairs of aortic arches develop in gnathosome embryos. During ontogeny, the arches are
reduced in number, the third (carotid), fourth (systemic) and sixth (pulmonary) being the most
persistent.
17) The paired dorsal aorta between the third and the fourth arches, when persistent, is the ductus
caroticus.
18) The dorsal segment of the sixth aortic arch is present until hatching or birth in birds and
mammals. This segment, the ductus arteriosus, shunts blood away from the lungs and to the
embryonic respiratory membranes (placenta in mammals). It becomes a ligament after birth.
19) The unpaired dorsal aorta of the trunk has paired segmental branches (somatic) to the body wall
and appendages, unpaired visceral branches to the digestive organs within the coelom and to the
spleen and paired visceral branches to the urogenital organs and adrenal glands. The embryonic
dorsal aorta of amniotes supplies an allantoic (umbilical) artery to the allantois or placenta.
20) Retia mirabilia are localized networks of arteries or are sites of close proximity of arterioles and
venules, with functions that vary with their location and with their species. Local heat or gas
exchange are two such functions.
21) Basic venous channels are anterior, posterior and common cardinals, abdominals, renal and
hepatic portals, hepatic sinuses and coronary veins. Pulmonary veins and a postcava are added in
dipnoans and tetrapods. Embryonic subintestinal and vitelline veins contribute to the hepatic
portal system. Allantoic (umbilical) veins drain the allantois or placenta in embryonic amniotes.
22) The renal portal system drains only the tail in fishes. It acquires connection with the hind limbs in
amphibians. In crocodilians and birds, this connection bypasses the kidney and goes directly to
the postcava. There is no renal portal system in adult mammals other than monotremes.
23) The postcava becomes increasingly important in tetrapods. Commencing as an alternate route
from kidneys to heart, it eventually drains the tail, hind limbs and most of the trunk.
24)
Remnants of embryonic vascular channels in adult mammals include the round ligament
of the liver (remnant of the left umbilical vein), ligamentum venosum (remnant of ductus
venosus), ligamentum arteriosum (remnant of left ductus arteriosus), lateral umbilical ligaments
(remnants of paired umbilical arteries from urinary bladder to umbilicus) and fossa ovalis
(occluded interatrial foramen ovale of fetus).