Two hypotheses for the early radiation of the metazoans are vividly discussed in recent
phylogenomic studies, the 'Porifera-first'hypothesis, which places the poriferans as the sister …

Understanding how important phenotypic, developmental, and genomic features of animals
originated and evolved is essential for many fields of biological research, but such …

The 'origin of larvae'has been widely discussed over the years, almost invariably with the
tacit understanding that larvae are secondary specializations of early stages in a …

The origin of many of the defining features of animal body plans, such as symmetry, nervous
system, and the mesoderm, remains shrouded in mystery because of major uncertainty …

The current paradigm of gut evolution assumes that non-bilaterian metazoan lineages either
lack a gut (Porifera and Placozoa) or have a sac-like gut (Ctenophora and Cnidaria) and that …

SYNOPSIS. A life cycle alternating between a microscopic larva (mmsized) and macroscopic
adult (cm-sized) occurs commonly among invertebrates. The pattern of occurrence of such a …

Animal evolution is often presented as a march toward complexity, with different living
animal groups each representing grades of organization that arose through the progressive …

Motile larvae figure prominently in a number of past scenarios for chordate and vertebrate
origins, notably in the writings of Garstang, Berrill, and Romer. All three focus on the motile …

Resolving the early diversification of animal lineages has proven difficult, even using
genome-scale datasets. Several phylogenomic studies have supported the classical …

Recent advancements in infrastructure and new theories propagating different ideas on the
early metazoan evolution initiated a comparison and in some aspects revision of existing …