In recent years, scientists have made remarkable progress reconstructing the animal
phylogeny. There is broad agreement regarding many deep animal relationships, including …

Metazoa comprises 35–40 phyla that include some 1.3 million described species.
Phylogenetic analyses of metazoan interrelationships have progressed in the past two …

Chaetognaths (arrow worms) are an enigmatic group of marine animals whose phylogenetic
position remains elusive, in part because they display a mix of developmental and …

Despite rapid advances in the study of metazoan evolutionary history [1], phylogenomic
analyses have so far neglected a number of microscopic lineages that possess a unique …

Animals make up only a small fraction of the eukaryotic tree of life, yet, from our vantage
point as members of the animal kingdom, the evolution of the bewildering diversity of animal …

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Browse Current Issue Journal Archive Collections Find and Read Articles Publish …

Systematics has developed rapidly during the past two decades. A multitude of new
methods and contributions from a diversity of biological fields including molecular genetics …

Recent phylogenomic analyses have suggested tunicates instead of cephalochordates as
the closest living relatives of vertebrates. In direct contradiction with the long accepted view …

The Viridiplantae (green plants) include land plants as well as the two distinct lineages of
green algae, chlorophytes and charophytes. Despite their critical importance for identifying …

Based on molecular data three major clades have been recognized within Bilateria:
Deuterostomia, Ecdysozoa, and Spiralia. Within Spiralia, small-sized and simply organized …