We hypothesized before (Heyland and
Hodin, 2004; Heyland and Moroz, 2005; Heyland et al., 2006b) that
endogenous hormone synthesis might have been a factor facilitating the evolution of non-feeding development in this group. Specifically we predicted that echinoid classes which rarely or never
underwent the transition to non-feeding development would have
a low capacity for endogenous hormone synthesis (Heyland and
Moroz, 2005). A broad comparison of species from different
echinoid classes will help to shed light on this question.