Abstract The Ordovician Period records an extraordinary biodiversity increase known as the
Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), which coincided with a series of …

Molecular techniques are currently the leading tools for reconstructing phylogenetic
relationships, but our understanding of ancestral, plesiomorphic and apomorphic characters …

Bryozoans (also known as ectoprocts or moss animals) are aquatic, dominantly sessile, filter-
feeding lophophorates that construct an organic or calcareous modular colonial (clonal) …

The relationships between parasites and their hosts are intimate, dynamic and complex; the
evolution of one is inevitably linked to the other. Despite multiple origins of parasitism in the …

The L ate J urassic to E arly C retaceous interval represents a time of environmental
upheaval and cataclysmic events, combined with disruptions to terrestrial and marine …

Classification is the most important approach to cataloging biological diversity. It serves as a
principal means of communication between scientific disciplines, as well as between …

Evolvability is best addressed from a multi-level, macroevolutionary perspective through a
comparative approach that tests for among-clade differences in phenotypic diversification in …

Inflammation is a defense mechanism of the body in response to harmful stimuli such as
pathogens, damaged cells, toxic compounds or radiation. However, chronic inflammation …

Bryozoans are mostly sessile colonial invertebrates that inhabit all kinds of aquatic
ecosystems. Extant bryozoan species fall into two clades with one of them, Phylactolaemata …

Pterobranchs, a major group of the phylum Hemichordata, first appear in the fossil record
during the Cambrian, 1 and there are more than 600 fossil genera dominated by the mainly …