The final pattern of the skeletal muscle of a vertebrate depends on the position-specific behavior of the muscle precursor cells during early developmental process and the abdominal muscle is made of cells which migrate a relatively long distance from their original tissue, myotome of dorsal mesoderm. We report the spatia-temporal migration pattern of abdominal muscle in Xenopus laevis by in situ hybridization and immunohistological studies. Shortly after hatching tadpole stage (stage 31/32), a group of myotomal cells detaches from the lower tip of the second somite and migrates ventrally to the lower position of abdomen. At stage 34/35, a second cell group migrates away from the third somite. Total 7 myotomal cell groups migrate ventrally one by one from the second to eighth myotome along their own pathways through the cell free space located between epidermis and subepidermal layer of the abdomen. During migration, the sizes of the cell groups (abdominal muscle anlagens) are increased to several tens fold. Around stage 40 all the abdominal muscle anlagens reaches their final positions and are interconnected side by side rostrocaudally. They are also connected to other types of muscles, forming a large multisegmented abdominal muscle. Heat shock study suggests that the disruption of segmentation of somites does not block the detachment of abdominal muscle anlagen, though the treatment gave stage- and dosagedependent effects on the migration speed.