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 …

Phylogenomic studies have improved understanding of deep metazoan phylogeny and
show promise for resolving incongruences among analyses based on limited numbers of …

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 …

Bushes in the Tree of Life | PLOS Biology Skip to main content Advertisement PLOS Biology
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 …

Whole-body regeneration is widespread in the Metazoa, yet little is known about how
underlying molecular mechanisms compare across phyla. Acoels are an enigmatic phylum …

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 phylogenomic approach has largely resolved metazoan phylogeny and improved our
knowledge of animal evolution based on morphology, paleontology, and embryology …