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 what is   difference between radial and spiral cleavages

radial cleavage means cleavage through the radius & spiral cleavage means cleavage through the whole body.


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 Cleavage is a series of mitotic divisions of the fertilised egg to form a multitude of cells called blastomeres.

Radial cleavage occurs when the sucessive divisions cut straight through the egg at right angles to each other and the resultan blastomeres become symmetrically arranged around the polar axis.eg starfish.

Spiral cleavage occurs when the successive divisions occur in a regular rotational movement resulting in blastomeres arranged in tiers or layers.eg Annelids.

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One of the hallmarks of deuterstome development is that early cleavage divisions are radial. In contrast, protostomes typically display spiral cleavage. While these classifications are certainly huge generalizations, they nevertheless point to some of the fundamental differences between different phyla regarding early development. Play the movie at the below right to get a sense for the difference between these two cleavage patterns in two generalized embryos.
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