Evolutionary progression at synaptic connections made by identified homologous neurones

A comparative ultrastructural study of photoreceptor synapses formed upon homologous postsynaptic neurones in insects has been made by using serial-section electron microscopy in representative Diptera from a monophyletic series of 14 families. At all of the synaptic contacts there is a presynaptic dense bar, surmounted in phylogenetically more recent families by a presynaptic platform. Opposite the bar lies a pair of postsynaptic elements that invariably originate one each from two unique monopolar neurones L1 and L2. Both elements contain increasingly elaborate cisternae in more recent flies. Within the phylogenetic series, the postsynaptic ensemble itself changes from the original dyad to a tetradic configuration in more recent Muscomorpha by the addition of two new postsynaptic elements from an amacrine cell. This transition occurs once only in the series, which, gauged by the fossil record, covers divergences from the stem line extending back greater than 200 million years.